Payers and providers face different challenges when it comes to compliance. The volume of price transparency data that hospitals must disclose online amounts to about 3 terabytes — compared to the whopping 630 terabytes of data that payers have been tasked with posting.

The healthcare industry is still building software to can handle its complex and vast pricing data, so it still has a few more years to go before price transparency information actually becomes useful. Once software development cycle matures, this data can infiltrate the way providers and payers negotiate contracts and affect the way patients shop for care.

Experts believe CMS’ price transparency rule is flawed in its design because the highly complex billing data it is asking hospitals to post is too confusing for consumers to understand. The complicated structure of the healthcare system — from care variance to deductibles to billing codes — means that producing an accurate price estimate is virtually impossible. To improve compliance, hospitals will need health tech companies to step in.

Pulling back the curtain on healthcare pricing is easier said than done, acknowledged Chris Severn, the company’s co-founder and CEO. That’s exactly why the investment is so important.

Read about new developments from HealthMine, WELL Ventures, Turquoise Health and Cariloop.