Epic Systems, a leading provider of digital medical records, calls on large hospitals to oppose proposed US rules that would open up access to patient records
at a minimum to consumers and institutions they trust.” https://twitter.com/... Raj Ratwani, PhD / @rajratwani : Disappointing to see efforts to stop this important rule that would provide open APIs & could foster innovative solutions to usability & safety challenges. Access to patient data, if done safely and securely, is good for all patients. Thx @aneeshchopra for speaking up. https://twitter.com/... Daniel Tunkelang / @dtunkelang : Epic and Cerner have a duopoly in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) space. They are clearly more concerned with protecting that duopoly from competition than with doing what's best for patients. https://www.cnbc.com/... Lisa Bari / @lisabari : Bottom line: this is not a good faith argument. Not finalizing the rules will only benefit the largest and most powerful holders of patient data. Interoperability now! https://twitter.com/... DJ Patil / @dpatil : Epic is taking the side that they don't believe your health care data is YOURS. They want to help hospitals BLOCK your ability to take it where it needs to go. This will prevent the care people deserve. For example coordination of care for cancer patients. Rare disease and more https://twitter.com/... Adrianna McIntyre / @onceupona : Data blocking is (one of a thousand reasons) why we can't have nice things https://twitter.com/... Rakesh Agrawal / @rakeshlobster : Epic and Cerner are two of the big obstacles in having better patient care in the US. When I moved from SF to NY, NYU couldn't pull up my records, even though both health systems used epic. Of course there is no reason why they want anyone else to access the data. Lock in. https://twitter.com/... Arjun Sethi / @arjunsethi : When companies have a monopoly and extract only profit, and they forego the importance to innovate for their customers, they resort to reacting, protecting and hoarding. This is why access to your own data matters, even in healthcare. https://www.cnbc.com/... Xavier Amatriain / @xamat : Very sad to see how corporations are (ab)using concepts like “privacy” or “ethics” with the sole purpose of asserting their dominance. https://twitter.com/... Jeremiah Schuur / @jschuurmd : I was taught early on that the best way to judge care is in the patient's interest. EPIC should do better than this; patient interest should be the priority not EPIC's financial interest interoperability and patient data access is a key to better healthcare and lower costs. https://twitter.com/... @timihealth : CNBC: Epic's CEO is urging hospital customers to oppose rules that would make it easier to share medical info. https://www.cnbc.com/... Such selfish motives are costing people their lives. You should be able to own and control all of your health data! @kentbottles : Epic CEO sends letter urging hospitals to oppose HHS data-sharing rule https://www.cnbc.com/... Andrey Ostrovsky / @andreyostrovsky : Judy Faulkner is what is wrong with US healthcare. Instead of innovating and discovering new revenue models, she's trying to protect old, harmful ways of doing business. Give patients their data. Hard stop. @chrissyfarr @aneeshchopra https://twitter.com/... Diede van Lamoen / @dvlamoen : The next major monopoly suit in the US will be against Epic. They literally cause harm to consumers by making impossible to interoperate with their systems. https://www.cnbc.com/... Thanks: @mattrosoff
Context & Ripple Effects
Epic Systems sits at the center of this fight because of its scale: the company claims to hold medical records for more than half of US patients, per an earlier profile of the privately held Wisconsin vendor. The proposed federal rules would require open APIs so patients can pull their records into third-party apps — a direct threat to a business built on being the system of record.
The opposition campaign did not emerge from nowhere: months earlier, [[a:945501|medical groups had already attacked the same data-sharing rules for lacking strong privacy protections]], giving Epic a ready-made argument that patient safety and data security require keeping access gated through institutions rather than apps.
First-order effects
- Large hospital systems are being asked to spend political capital on Epic's behalf, choosing between their dominant EHR vendor's preferences and compliance with rules HHS has proposed.
- If the rules go forward as written, app developers and patients gain direct API access to records currently locked inside Epic installations, bypassing the vendor as intermediary.
Second-order effects
- Cerner, which alongside Epic controls the EHR market per critics like Daniel Tunkelang who call it a duopoly, faces pressure to pick a side — open APIs erode the switching costs that protect both incumbents.
- The privacy critique from medical groups gets amplified into the central counterargument, forcing the rule's backers to defend security design rather than just patient rights.
Third-order effects
- The pattern held: despite the lobbying, [[a:983625|federal rules requiring organizations to give patients full digital access to their records took effect on October 6, 2022]], meaning incumbents' moats shift from controlling data access to competing on workflow and usability.
- With the US having already spent $36 billion digitizing records amid safety complaints, interoperability mandates become the lever regulators reach for when vendor-controlled systems underdeliver — a template for other gatekept data markets.
The trend: US health IT is moving from vendor-controlled record silos toward regulator-mandated interoperability, converting data lock-in from a durable moat into a contested, revocable advantage.