Why It Matters
Understanding how federal agencies are interpreting information‑blocking rules as antitrust tools signals a shift toward more aggressive regulation of dominant health‑IT vendors. For providers, developers, and patients, this could mean increased pressure on Epic to open data flows, fostering competition and potentially lowering costs across the healthcare ecosystem.
Epic in the Crosshairs
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The ASTP Annual Meeting has been a fascinating conference. It's the biggest gathering of the health tech and interoperability Illuminati, so it's worthwhile just from the standpoint of seeing people. But you hope for more - maybe an allusion to future rulemaking or a buzzy announcement. However, the government is generally prohibited from forward facing announcements that typify these sort of events. So listening for nuggets slipped into speeches or presentations is the metaphoric gold-panning de jour.
There was not much gold to be found on day 1! Most of the sessions were down the fairway recountings of the major government health tech initiatives: USCDI, TEFCA, information blocking and more. Other breakouts were listening sessions for the government to hear from industry.
So were there any nuggets? The main one for me was the surprise panel that kicked off the Information Blocking 201 breakout that featured the DOJ, FTC, OIG, and ASTP:
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Information blocking is a deep and multifaceted regulation, but the point of this panel was to highlight the procompetitive aspects of the rule. It was a coordinated federal framing of health IT as both a competition issue and a compliance/enforcement issue, with information blocking as the connective tissue.
Marcus Brazill of the DOJ Antitrust Division gave a very solid primer on the Sherman Act. He is notably a holdover from the Biden and Kanter era, so his verbiage had some big dog antitrust tells. In particular, I couldn't help but think of the Digital Markets Act with the “gatekeepers with market power” framing. It is also the same language DOJ and FTC use in Big Tech monopolization cases (Google, Apple, etc.).
Beyond that, the panel’s discussion of switching costs, lock-in, and chilling innovation all signaled quite candidly that they're looking at Epic. No, they did not name them. But active investigations are not discussed publicly and even exploratory inquiries are treated carefully. But agencies do not repeatedly solicit complaints in public forums unless they are building matters or scoping conduct
There are at least three overlapping routes that they may use:
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