Despite the digitization ofhealth care records in recent years, hospitals, clinics andpharmacies still struggle to get access to relevant patientrecords. (Image: Shutterstock)

Big Tech wants to do its part to make health care more transparent and, hopefully, moreaffordable.

An assortment of major tech companies signed a pledge Monday tohelp ease the flow of critical health care data between patients andproviders.

“We are jointly committed to removing barriers for the adoptionof technologies for health care interoperability, particularly those that areenabled through the cloud and AI,” said the joint statement. “Weshare the common quest to unlock the potential in health care data,to deliver better outcomes at lower costs.”

Related: Health care data analytics: true meaning,actionability and value

So far, the companies include Microsoft, Google, Amazon, IBM,Oracle and Salesforce.

What each company might do to facilitate the exchange ofinformation in health care remains vague.

The problems they have to address are far clearer. Despite thedigitization of health care records in recent years, hospitals,clinics and pharmacies still struggle to get access to relevantpatient records. Hospitals have different records systems that makeit difficult to share information with the many other providersthat might interact with a patient.

“Even though that information is now digitized, it's held inmany different formats and standards, such that the patient can'tcontrol that data, or move it seamlessly from one practice to thenext,” Dean Garfield, president of the Information TechnologyIndustry Council, tells the Wall Street Journal. “It can't flowfluidly.”

The lack of information flow in health care has been identifiedas a multi-billion dollar cost-driver. When doctors have quickaccess to a patient's medical history, they have a much betterunderstanding of what the patient needs, or just as importantly,what they don't need.

However, making the system more efficient is not only atechnical issue. The more transparent health care costs become, theeasier it will be for patients to compare prices between providers,a prospect that worries some hospitals.

In addition, electronic health records companies, notably Epicand Cerner, have built their success largely on the fact thatproviders that do not implement their EHR systems cannot get accessto patient information from other providers that have. As a result,once a large hospital in an area puts in place that system, all ofthe other clinics that depend on sharing information with thathospital are strongly incentivized to put in place the same systemor risk getting shut out.