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

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

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

“Even though that information is now digitized, it's held in many different formats and standards, such that the patient can't control that data, or move it seamlessly from one practice to the next,” Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, tells the Wall Street Journal. “It can't flow fluidly.”

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

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

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