Health Data Should Flow Freely — Patients Agree

At Alcott, we believe your health data should work for you — not sit locked away behind portals or paperwork.

The numbers tell a compelling story about the state of health data exchange today. Epic's Care Everywhere network alone facilitates over 20 million patient record exchanges daily, with around half of those exchanges happening with organizations using different interoperable EHR systems. That's massive progress — but it also reveals how much health data sharing still happens in silos.

The scale is staggering, but the silos persist. Epic currently commands 42.3% of the hospital EHR market and serves over 305 million patients, making it the dominant force in health records. Yet over 60% of healthcare executives cite data silos as a major barrier to leveraging analytics effectively, while nearly 80% of healthcare data remains unstructured and inaccessible.

Recent data from Epic shows over 712 million records were exchanged for treatment in April 2025. Notably, 338 million of those were exchanged within Epic, and 373 million with external EHRs. While this volume reflects progress, the distribution reveals a fundamental challenge: interoperability is still largely confined within vendor ecosystems.

We recently surveyed patients and caregivers using Alcott. The message was clear:

This is not simply a matter of convenience — it directly affects the quality, timeliness, and personalization of care.

Patients Want Seamless, Automatic Data Connection

We asked our community what they wanted, and the answer was clear: patients want their health data connected automatically. The research backs this up overwhelmingly. 81% of adults support increased access to health information for patients and providers, and more than two-thirds want their clinicians to exchange health information that federal data-sharing policies don't currently require — including advanced care plans, family medical histories, and imaging.

Manually uploading records, printing lab results, or navigating confusing portals isn't the future — it's friction that gets in the way of better care. 94% of patients want companies to be held legally accountable for uses of their health data, and 93% want health app developers to be transparent about how their products use and share personal health data. The message is clear: patients want control, transparency, and seamless access.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this demand. About 4 in 10 survey respondents said the coronavirus pandemic made them more likely to support efforts that enable data-sharing among a patient's providers and let people download their personal data from EHRs to apps on smartphones and other devices.

The Hidden Cost of Data Silos

This isn't just about convenience — data silos are expensive. A lack of analytics and data fragmentation contributes to administrative complexity that's linked to more than $265 billion in unnecessary annual healthcare spending in the United States. When healthcare data resides in disparate systems, organizations struggle to share information, collaborate, and make data-driven decisions, while staff spend more time on clerical work.

The human cost is equally significant. When patient data is siloed, healthcare providers often have incomplete access to critical medical histories, which can lead to misdiagnosis, delayed treatments, or unnecessary procedures, ultimately compromising patient care.

Beyond Labs and Meds: Whole Health Integration

But this isn't just about traditional medical records — labs, medications, and imaging. Whole health needs to be integrated too.

The global wearable medical devices market is experiencing steady growth and is predicted to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.6% from 2023 to 2030. Wearables, sleep trackers, mental health logs, supplements, even financial stressors — these shape our health as much as a cholesterol panel. Yet they're still largely disconnected from traditional medical records.

The gap is significant: while adoption of wearable medical devices among American patients is growing, 46% of them report that their physicians aren't including the collected data into their treatment plans. This represents a massive missed opportunity for preventive care and personalized medicine.

By 2025, over 50% of wearables are expected to leverage AI for more precise health tracking and predictive health insights, particularly in chronic disease management. The technology is ready — we just need the integration infrastructure to catch up.

Infrastructure Leaders Paving the Way

If we're serious about outcomes and prevention, we need a connected model of care that pulls from the full picture — not just the parts that fit in an EHR. The infrastructure is catching up, with leaders like CommonWell, TEFCA, and Health Gorilla paving the way.

CommonWell Health Alliance now connects 36,000 provider organizations, serves more than 244 million unique individuals, and has facilitated over 8.5 billion records retrieved on the network. As a designated Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) under TEFCA, CommonWell's platform ensures seamless, secure, and efficient exchange of health information among providers, patients, and other healthcare stakeholders.

Health Gorilla, another QHIN, has seen remarkable growth since going live, with query volume growing more than 21% per month, from about 200,000 to more than 66 million queries in March 2025. More than 1,000 Epic hospital customers and 22,000 clinics are now live on the government-backed TEFCA framework, signaling the momentum building toward true nationwide interoperability.

The Promise of Patient-Centered Interoperability

But what's missing is a relentless focus on making it seamless for patients. Current interoperability standards like FHIR prioritize institutional needs. FHIR and similar standards prioritize institutional interoperability rather than patient-centered interoperability, and cannot retrieve patients' health records if they are stored by multiple healthcare providers with diverse interoperability standards.

That's where Alcott comes in.

We're building a system that automatically connects your medical records, wearable data, lifestyle inputs, and supplements — so your care team sees the whole you. No uploading, no emailing PDFs, no app fatigue. Our platform puts patient-centered interoperability first, ensuring that your complete health story follows you wherever you receive care.

Building the Future of Connected Care

The building blocks for seamless health data exchange are falling into place. Digital-first patient engagement is poised to become a defining factor in healthcare delivery by 2025, driven by patients who are accustomed to seamless digital experiences in other aspects of their lives and now expect the same level of convenience and accessibility in their healthcare interactions.

Healthcare organizations are recognizing this shift. The ongoing transition to value-based care models emphasizes patient outcomes and cost-efficiency, making digital tools that empower patients to actively participate in their own care even more essential.

A Call to Action

Let's stop asking people to be their own data brokers. Let's stop accepting that your fitness tracker knows more about your daily health than your doctor does. Let's stop tolerating systems that force patients to remember and manually transfer their complete medical history every time they see a new provider.

The technology exists. The patient demand is clear. The infrastructure is rapidly expanding. What we need now is a commitment to putting patients — not institutions — at the center of health data interoperability.

At Alcott, we're building the system that puts you at the center — whole, connected, and ready for better care.

Ready to experience truly connected health data? Learn more about how Alcott is revolutionizing patient-centered care at alcottai.com.