About

Open Referral

The Open Referral Initiative develops data standards and open platforms that make it easy to share and find information about community resources. Learn more about the initiative at OpenReferral.org.

Data Specifications

This site contains documentation for the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS) and the API specification.

These can be used to structure and exchange information about the accessibility of health, human, and social services. Specifically, the HSDS describes data about organizations, the services they provide, the locations at which these services can be accessed, and associated details. It also describes protocols for accessing and managing this data.

Our ecosystem

Open Referral’s ecosystem includes a range of working open source software applications that can be freely redeployed to work with HSDS-compatible data and/or APIs. Many of these tools can be found in our Github organization.

Learn more about the why’s, how’s, and who’s of the Open Referral Initiative in our Public Documentation, and browse all of our Project Documents on Google Drive

Join Open Referral’s Community of Practice

Get in touch

Questions not answered here? Suggestions for us?

Email us! We can discuss directly, and/or invite you to join us in Slack, where we conduct weekly office hours on Fridays at 12p EST.

We also have an active forum which you can join to engage in the various topics and ongoing discussions surrounding Open Referral and HSDS.

Site contents

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