On Monday IBM announced its partnership with Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Apple and also the acquirement of 2 medical-data software companies. IBM will use its experience in data processing in the domain of health care.
The initial collaboration was between Johnson & Johnson, Apple and Medtronic. IBM will contribute with its artificial-intelligence technology known under the name of Watson technology. John E. Kelly from IBM, a senior vice president who supervises new initiative and research labs, said that the company will enable personalized health care on a vast scale.
Under the form of a cloud-based service, Watson technology will monitor huge stores of health data and offer tailored insight to researchers, hospitals, insurers, physicians and possible individual patients.
So the four partners will work together in order to develop data analytics for the healthcare system by providing tons of health-related data. This collaboration indicates a growing view among medical providers and technology vendors. Patient information could offer valuable insight and open business opportunities. Since the payment approach tends to go for rewarding advantageous health outcomes instead of rewarding services renders such insight are very valuable. By providing tailored health care Watson Health will cut costs and improve outcomes.
Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic will contribute with information from patients who consent to share it under health privacy laws. IBM’s job would be to consolidate the data and turn it into an application which will be sold to various branches of medical providers. Apple will provide nutrition, fitness, heart-rate and various similar data which will be uploaded to applications running on iPhones and iPads. In order to make this project happen IBM will establish headquarters in Boston and employ 2.000 people and 75 medical practitioners.
John Kelly remarked:
“The health-care system is highly fragmented with very little sharing of information, and outcomes are not acceptable and the cost is completely unacceptable. As we see health care becoming more information-based, we see a role for IBM to step in.”
Critics of health information technology support IBM’s effort. Professor Dr. Robert M. Wachter of the University of California declared that if this plan works in the future it will need such key players to collaborate in order for things to become real. He agreed that this is an important step.
Image Source: IBM
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