Some of the biggest tech giants Monday agreed to build health care products that use a common set of standards in order to make it easier to share medical data across hospitals. What’s more, these are open standards and specifications aimed at encouraging “frictionless data exchange.”

Sipping a lemon-flavored VitaminWater at a sprawling complex of laboratories and offices in Tarrytown, New York, Leonard Schleifer, the 66-year-old cofounder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, is, as usual, criticizing the pricing practices of other drug companies. (He once told the chief executive of Pfizer: "You're not entitled to a fraction of the GDP.")