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Opinion: Draft rules on health information: a ‘Reformation’ in the making?

In the 16th century, the printing press helped give people direct access to religious information. Now it's time to use the internet to give individuals control over their own health…
A bas-relief of the German printing pioneer Johannes Gutenberg checking his work while his assistant turns the press, circa 1450.

The hot-button issues in health care today are high drug prices, surprise medical bills, and “Medicare for All.” So it’s no surprise that recent draft rules on health information technology that could profoundly alter the landscape of American medicine have received little attention.

These draft regulations, swaddled in hundreds of pages of technical language, decisively disrupt medicine’s clinical and economic power structure by removing control over digitized health information from institutions and giving it to patients.

Think of it as a , a societal upheaval

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