The Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP/ONC) has released a new set of Information Blocking FAQs, offering clarification on how the Information Blocking Rule applies to evolving health IT practices. One newly issued FAQ specifically states that the regulations may be implicated when an actor’s practices interfere with automation technologies’ ability to access, exchange, or use electronic health information (EHI), such as robotic process automation or agentic artificial intelligence. This guidance reinforces ONC’s expectation that certified health IT and related practices should support automated data access and exchange, a critical foundation for APIs, population health tools, and AI-enabled workflows. In addition to automation, ONC also published new FAQs addressing revenue sharing and when certain financial arrangements may raise information blocking concerns, the role of the requester under the Manner Exception, and the scope of EHI that must be made available to satisfy the Manner Exception.
