Yesterday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made available data on millions of reports of drug adverse events and medication errors made to FDA between 2004 and 2013. The release of the data is part of FDA’s new data sharing initiative, openFDA, which is designed to make it easier for developers, researchers and the public to access data collected by FDA. OpenFDA organizes large amounts of publicly-available data in a structured, computer-readable format and makes it possible for users to instantaneously search and pull the data for their own use. . According to Walter Harris, FDA’s chief operating officer and acting chief information officer, “openFDA is a valuable resource that will help those in the private and public sectors use FDA public data to spur innovation, advance academic research, educate the public, and protect public health.”

For now, openFDA will begin as a pilot program with data involving the drug adverse event and medication error reports. FDA will later expand openFDA to include data on product recalls and product labeling.