Global Healthsites Mapping Project - building an open data commons of health facility data with OpenStreetMap

When a natural disaster or disease outbreak occurs there is a rush to establish accurate health care location data that can be used to support people on the ground. This has been demonstrated by events such as the Haiti earthquake and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. As a result valuable time is wasted establishing accurate and accessible baseline data. Healthsites.io establishes this data and the tools necessary to upload, manage and make the data easily accessible. Global scope The Global Healthsites Mapping Project is an initiative to create an online map of every health facility in the world and make the details of each location easily accessible. Open data collaboration Through collaborations with users, trusted partners and OpenStreetMap the Global Healthsites Mapping Project will capture and validate the location and contact details of every facility and make this data freely available under an Open Data License (ODBL). Accessible The Global Healthsites Mapping Project will make the data accessible over the Internet through an API and other formats such as GeoJSON, Shapefile, KML, CSV. Focus on health care location data The Global Healthsites Mapping Project's design philosophy is the long term curation and validation of health care location data. The healthsites.io map will enable users to discover what healthcare facilities exist at any global location and the associated services and resources.