karmadata has announced the launch of MyHealth.io, a website that provides patients in need of surgery the ability to find the best surgeon in their area based on each surgeon's volume and the quality of his or her affiliated hospital.

MyHealth.io received one of three financial awards from the Health Data Consortium at the 2014 Health Datapalooza, and the karmadata team had the honor of presenting MyHealth.io to over 2,000 healthcare data experts and patient advocates from around the country.

Karmadata founder and CEO Sean Power said that MyHealth.io is its opening salvo in creating free tools for patients, putting them in the driver’s seat for making informed decisions that impact their own healthcare.

"Each year there are millions of surgeries performed in the U.S. and most patients have absolutely no way to comparison shop for their surgeon. Most surgical patients end up accepting a blind referral, typically from their primary care physician, without having access to important information," Power added.

Karmadata chief data scientist Brendan Kelleher said that the release of physician identifiable data from Medicare has changed all of that.

"We link surgical volumes by surgeon for each procedure to data on the surgeon’s hospital. This allows the patient to not only see which surgeon has performed the most procedures, but also specific quality ratings on the surgeon’s affiliated hospital drawn from patient surveys and quantitative performance metrics released each year by CMS. Now comparison shopping for a surgeon using important factors such as volume and quality is easy," Kelleher added.