Open data reduces mortality rate in UK hospitals

In 2004, the UK heart surgeon Sir Bruce Keogh persuaded his colleagues (there are 240 heart surgeons in the English NHS) to publish comparable data on their individual clinical outcomes – a global first. 7 years later, dramatic improvements in survival rates are reported – in some procedures, more than a third of patients are living when they might previously have died; in all, there are 1,000 fewer deaths in English heart surgery units each year than there were.

Read more about this story in this paper by Tim Kelsey.