Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com have launched a campaign for restrictions on data sharing between hospitals to be dropped.
At the Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference in Washington, D.C., the companies issued a joint statement against patient data sharing restrictions.
“We are jointly committed to removing barriers for the adoption of technologies for healthcare interoperability, particularly those that are enabled through the cloud and AI,” the companies declared. “We share the common quest to unlock the potential in healthcare data, to deliver better outcomes at lower costs.”
According to CNBC, the companies even proposed building tools “for the health community around a set of common standards for exchanging health information electronically.”
Aneesh Chopra, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama as the first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the United States of America, praised the campaign in an interview with CNBC.
“Today’s announcement is both a big deal, and just a start,” Chopra proclaimed. “The big deal is that the major cloud platforms, like Apple earlier this year, understand that a sector as complicated as healthcare benefits greatly from open standards… However, it is a start, as we have so much more work to do to standardize the entire health record, with the capacity for applications to read and write back to the patient’s record without special effort.”
The Obama administration’s involvement in healthcare I.T., Healthcare.gov, is considered one of the great technological failures of our time.
Amazon has recently announced it will open healthcare clinics for employees in Seattle, with an eye on expanding. The company is also partnering with Berkshire Hathaway to focus on free-market healthcare reform.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.