ideasIdea
Public procurement clauses banning data export fees and lock-in
Hospitals buying cancer software with public money would be required to include contract terms guaranteeing free, standard data export and no penalties for switching.
Vendors often charge for data extraction or restrict interfaces. Model procurement clauses (open APIs, no export fees, data portability on contract end, right to audit) adopted by national purchasers would change vendor behaviour faster than regulation. The US 21st Century Cures Act information-blocking rules are the closest precedent; procurement is a complementary lever available to any public health system.
Hypothesis
Adoption of standard clauses by national purchasers will eliminate export fees in new contracts within two years and reduce reported integration time for research extracts by a third.
Rationale
Procurement power moved the software industry to open standards in government IT; hospital systems are one of the largest public software purchases and have not used the lever.
What would test it
Publish model clauses; get three national purchasers to adopt them; survey cancer centres on export costs and integration times before and after.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
policy
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks
- Data silos · Records, scans, genomes and outcomes sit in separate systems that cannot talk. Every patient's experience is lost to the next.