ORLANDO, Fla. — As the nation’s largest annual gathering of health technology leaders wraps up Friday, many are leaving surprised, and emboldened, by the breadth of a Trump administration proposal to liberate vast stores of patient information to help deliver on the promise of better, digitally enabled care.
By allowing patients to control their electronic health records — and share them with researchers and entrepreneurs as they see fit — the government is hoping to harness the increasing power of artificial intelligence and other digital tools to provide more personalized medical services at a lower cost.
The Department of Health Human Services opened this year’s gathering of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society by unveiling proposed rules that would force insurers participating in federal programs to give patients immediate electronic access to medical records and other health information by next year. The government had already made similar demands of hospitals and other medical providers, and industry specialists expect the new rules to spur greater information sharing throughout the industry.
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