I think the article is referencing employee-based cost transparency tools such as Castlight.

These are by nature private, and costly.

My startup is working on providing these tools for anybody, free of cost:

http://comparedcare.com

Let me know what you think.

This is exciting news

Would definitely be interesting to see it being used for entertainment purposes. But it appears its a "last resort" kind of app, especially with Hong Kong's situation.

If people are growing more and more concerned with privacy that could be the nudge. Or if they offered something standard SMS cannot (speed, feature, etc.)