Jonathan Bush and Aneesh Chopra weigh in on anti-data blocking regulations

“As much as it pains me to say anything nice about Donald Trump, the current HHS seemed to have caught on to a lot of the monopolistic practices of the medical centers and appears to be willing to stand up to them, which was not the case in either my cousin’s administration or in the Obama’s administration where they really just rolled right over for these guys.
I’m really excited about the unbundling of medicine. The ICHRA, the [anti-data blocking regulations], and companies like [Redox] are making it possible for people to reassemble the piece parts of medicine and offer more targeted, more efficient, and more pleasing services.”

-Jonathan Bush

“In the Dodd-Frank Legislation [governing the financial industry], we added a provision that says the consumer has the right to access their [financial] data and connect it to an app of their choice. That provision gave legal authority to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to issue regulations [which are] the equivalent of the ONC Meaningful Use Rule. That legislation went into effect 2010 … [The financial services industry has] their equivalent of the FHIR API called the OFX API … standards development was driven by industry consensus … in 90 days. Now in healthcare, we have a number of problems … but technology is not one of them.
[The interoperability rules are] a flag in the ground that says the consumer is the bedrock authority that has the right to their information … not a little bit of their information, but everything. [A byproduct of the consumer access is that] you can absolutely reuse that investment in B2B, BAA-governed traditional healthcare transactions … you get a two-for-one in this massive infrastructure upgrade.  Once the flag is in the ground, the technical work is to data map all of the proprietary data sets, convert them to an open data standards, and transmit that intellectual property-free data set wherever that patient chooses. 
The net neutrality concept is that if Comcast is the chosen vendor to control the pipes, they can not take advantage of that unique role in somehow weakening my ability to watch Netflix. I, as the consumer, who pays a fair price for that pipe, have the freedom to choose any app. That net neutrality is the bedrock of the proposed interoperability rules around information blocking. The EHRs are unlikely to get replaced [due to the amount of money spent installing them.] What we will see is that the EHRs will be paid a fair utility price for the pipes they’ve made available. The marketplace should not be [open and fair] for both EHR-developed native apps and substitutable apps. I am highly confident that the federal government will come out in favor of net neutrality like models. That is the existential threat to the [EHR] industry.”

Aneesh Chopra