In 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the Health Data Initiative to make its data available for public use[2][3] and, in collaboration with the Institute of Medicine, hosted a public forum featuring various private, non-profit, and entrepreneurial stakeholder groups to explore how the data could be used to promote innovation that would improve people's health.

[4] This forum was held again in 2011[5] and 2012, wherein it was rebranded into its current iteration as the Health Datapalooza.

[6][7] Due to the success of the forum and growing industry interest, HHS, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the California HealthCare Foundation, and other parties involved believed that there needed to be a structured organization independent of the government that could convene stakeholder groups and promote the health data mission year-round.

They approached Forum One Communications to help establish this organization as a public-private partnership, which was named the Health Data Consortium.

[14] The directory currently features over fifty open health data entries.