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IBM Watson

National Outlets

IBM Positions Itself as Large Broker of Health Data
Apr 13, 2015 | Wall Street Journal
By Elizabeth Dwoskin

An unlikely set of partners has teamed up in an ambitious effort to capitalize on a gathering flood of health-related personal information. International Business Machines Corp. announced Monday a partnership with Apple Inc.,Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic, as well as the acquisition of two medical data software companies.
IBM Creates Watson Health to Analyze Medical Data
Apr 13, 2015 | New York Times Bits Blog
By Steve Lohr

IBM is taking its Watson artificial-intelligence technology into health care in a big way with industry partners, a pair of acquisitions and an ambitious agenda. The initial three industry partners are Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic.
IBM wants your smartwatch to talk to your doctor
Apr 13, 2015 | Washington Post
By Hayley Tsukayama

It may finally be time for your smartwatch to talk to your doctor. Plenty of people wear fitness trackers. And plenty of doctors use electronic data to help with patient care. But it's also true that these silos of data often never meet, arguably limiting how useful any of it could be to patients. IBM is aiming to change that, saying Monday that it's striking deals with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to collect and use more information from personal medical devices to help with patients' clinical care.

Wires

IBM launches new health unit, teams up with Apple, J&J, Medtronic
Apr 13, 2015 | Reuters
By Bill Rigby

International Business Machines Corp, deepening its partnership with Apple Inc to make use of health information gathered by millions of Apple devices, is creating a unit dedicated to providing data analytics to the healthcare sector.
IBM Joins With Apple, J&J to Analyze Health Data in the Cloud
Apr 13, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Alex Barinka and Cynthia Koons

IBM is joining with Apple Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic Plc to create a technology that will make it easier for health-care companies to analyze patient data.

Financial Outlets

IBM’s new healthcare prescription: a standalone business unit
Apr 13, 2015 | Fortune
By Heather Clancy

Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic are key first partners for IBM Watson Health, which will devote at least 2,000 employees to medical analytics and other industry solutions. IBM is taking a far more holistic approach to healthcare.
IBM Adds Apple, Others to Watson Partnership, Unveils Watson Health Cloud
Apr 13, 2015 | TheStreet
By Chris Ciaccia

IBM (IBM - Get Report) is continuing to push Watson, its artificial intelligence system, to the limits. On Monday, it announced it's unveiling a Watson Health business unit, as well as a Watson Health Cloud platform that incorporates partnerships with Apple (AAPL - Get Report), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ - Get Report), Medtronic (MDT - Get Report) and others to give people a more complete look at their health.
IBM Pulls Apple, J&J Into Watson Health Data Alliance
Apr 13, 2015 | Investors.com
By Ed Carson

IBM (NYSE:IBM) unveiled a new Watson Health business unit with several big-name partners and two small acquisitions, as it expands the health-care uses for its artificial intelligence computer.
IBM buys health tech startups, launches Watson Health, expands Apple deal
Apr 13, 2015 | Seeking Alpha
By Eric Jhonsa

Looking to grab a bigger chunk of a burgeoning healthcare analytics market by offering more industry-specific solutions, IBM is buying Phytel, a provider of cloud-based patient data aggregation/analysis software, and Explorys, provider of a massive clinical database (said to consist of 315B datapoints) and a slew of analytics apps that run on top of them. Terms are undisclosed.
IBM (IBM) Announces Acquisition of Intelligence Cloud Company, Explorys
Apr 13, 2015 | StreetInsider

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced plans to acquire Explorys, a healthcare intelligence cloud company that has built one of the largest clinical data sets in the world, representing more than 50 million lives. The acquisition strengthens IBM's leadership position in healthcare analytics and cloud computing, and will help bolster its ability to extract and share deep insights to improve wellness and benefit patients.
IBM Announces Deals With Apple, Johnson And Johnson, And Medtronic In Bid To Transform Health Care
Apr 13, 2015 | Forbes
By Matthew Herper

Experts in health care and information technology agree on the future’s biggest opportunity: the creation of a new computational model that will link together all of the massive computers that now hold medical information. The question remains: who will build it, and how?
IBM acquires health tech startups Explorys and Phytel
Apr 13, 2015 | VentureBeat
By Jordan Novet

IBM announced today that it has acquired two startups, Explorys and Phytel, to beef up its health-focused data-analytics efforts. The news comes as IBM makes a concerted push in health care. In addition to announcing the acquisitions, IBM today also announced a new Watson Health unit.

Tech Blogs

Apple partners with IBM Watson Health Cloud to bring secure cloud, data analytics to HealthKit and ResearchKit
Apr 13, 2015 | Apple Insider
By Mikey Campbell

Built around Watson technology, IBM's new service pulls in and analyzes massive amounts of real-time data provided by personal electronic devices, such as fitness trackers, connected medical devices, implantables and other sensors. The company will also expand its MobileFirst for iOS portfolio of apps to include HealthKit-powered software.
IBM's Watson Health division will incorporate patient data from Apple
Apr 13, 2015 | PC World
By Fred O'Connor

The health information your Apple Watch collects could eventually end up in IBM’s Watson cloud computing platform, where medical researchers and doctors can tap it in the course of their work. On Monday, IBM launched the Watson Health business unit, which will focus on providing the health care community with the analysis tools required to make sense of the many forms of data used in clinical care.
IBM's Watson Health begins mining HealthKit data
Apr 13, 2015 | TecRadar.Pro
By Chuong Nguyen

In its latest push into the healthcare industry, IBM is creating a new business unit to analyze and store data for the healthcare sector. Based in Boston, IBM's Watson Health unit will aggregate health data from providers and devices to offer insights to healthcare companies like Johnson & Johnson and Metronic.
IBM's cognitive computer will help solve your health problems
Apr 13, 2015 | Engadget
By Jon Fingas

Just because you can collect a lot of information about your health doesn't mean that you can easily make sense of it. How do you connect the dots between, say, your smartwatch and your medical records? IBM thinks it has the answer: it's launching Watson Health Cloud, a platform that uses the company's cognitive computer system to help companies and doctors make decisions based on data that might otherwise prove daunting. They could recommend a change in your prescription, for example, or outline your surgery recovery plans.
IBM announces new partnership w/ Apple for HealthKit & ResearchKit data
Apr 13, 2015 | 9to5 Mac
By Chance Miller

IBM this evening has announced a new dedicated health unit that will deepen its relationship with Apple. The service, called Watson Health, will use the data collected with Apple’s HealthKit and ResearchKit services to provide information to various other companies including Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic.

Health Care Outlets

IBM Watson makes major move into health IT
Apr 13, 2015 | Modern Healthcare
By Michael Sandler and Darius Tahir

IBM upped its entry in the health information technology sweepstakes Monday by unveiling three major partnerships and making two acquisitions designed to bolster its supercomputer Watson platform.
Massive IBM deal gives Watson purpose and puts it in pole position to transform healthcare
Apr 13, 2015 | MedCity News
By Chris Seper

For years Watson wandered in the wilderness of healthcare while IBM sought any partner it could to feed a beast that simply wanted more medical data.
IBM announces two key acquisitions, launches new business unit
Apr 13, 2015 | HealthcareDIVE
By Katie Bo Williams

IBM today announced the acquisition of leading population health management software provider Phytel to help bolster the company's analytics offerings; and of big data cloud service Explorys, a former Cleveland Clinic spin-off.

Online Outlets

IBM's Watson Health Cloud is on a mission to reduce healthcare costs
Apr 13, 2015 | Mashable
By Lance Ulanoff

Is information the answer to every problem? Perhaps, as IBM sees it, only with the right amount of access and analysis. The company is about to put IBM Watson, the Jeopardy-playing, dinner-cooking, cloud-based supercomputer in a blender with billions of healthcare data bits. The result: Watson Health Cloud.
IBM Launches Watson Health Cloud, So Your Doctor Can See Your Wearable Data
Apr 13, 2015 | Co.exist
By Neil Ungerleider

Soon, your doctor may be able to see real-time health information from your Apple Watch or Fitbit, and IBM's Watson—the smart computing system that once won Jeapordy!—could be the software that makes it happen. The company announced a new product today—Watson Health Cloud—that's designed to give physicians, researchers, insurers, and health technology companies secure access to mountains of patient data. IBM is betting that putting that data in your doctor's hands could both improve medical care and speed the pace of health research.
IBM Partners With Apple, J&J, Medtronic To Create New Health-based Offerings
Apr 13, 2015 | RTT News

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM: Quote) said Monday that it is establishing a Watson Health Cloud that will provide a secure and open platform for physicians, researchers, insurers and companies focused on health and wellness solutions.

National Outlets

IBM Positions Itself as Large Broker of Health Data

Apr 13, 2015 | Wall Street Journal

By Elizabeth Dwoskin

An unlikely set of partners has teamed up in an ambitious effort to capitalize on a gathering flood of health-related personal information.

International Business Machines Corp. announced Monday a partnership with AppleInc.,Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic, as well as the acquisition of two medical data software companies. Known as Watson Health, the effort transfers IBM’s past experience in data processing to the sensitive field of health care, part of an evolving strategy to pool and analyze data from other companies, such as Twitter and The Weather Channel. It will attempt to leverage the tech giant’s analytics and health-care software businesses into a new generation of apps for patients and providers.

The project reflects a growing view among technology vendors and medical providers that patient information that could yield valuable insights—and business opportunities—is locked up in proprietary silos. Such insights are becoming more valuable as payments in health care shift toward rewarding favorable health outcomes rather than services rendered. Watson Health would marshal huge amounts of scrambled and aggregated patient data in the service of providing individualized health care that might improve outcomes and cut costs.

IBM, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic will share revenue from any apps sold. Apple will receive a cut of revenue through its App Store.

Similar big-data efforts under way in health care include Optum Labs, a collaboration between UnitedHealth Group and the Mayo Clinic, in which researchers mine clinical and insurance data in search of micro-patterns that give clues to early indicators of disease and help to tailor treatments. Precision Medicine, an initiative announced by President Obama earlier this year, will combine genetic data with information from fitness trackers.

“The question is how does the medical system move away from broad categories to customized guidance,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, associate chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California and author of The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age. Apps produced by Watson Health, he said, could enable a physician to develop a treatment course for a specific patient based on the genetic makeup and fitness levels of large numbers of similar patients. Results for consumers, though, were likely to be years away.

IBM’s Watson data-mining technology has delivered impressive results, famously winning at Jeopardy in 2011, but the path to revenue has been slow. Turning data into actionable insights is a tremendous challenge, and health care data poses greater difficulties, from accuracy to scientific value. Similar projects have been very slow going with sparse results. “The signal-to-noise problems are humongous in health care,” Wachter said. “People who think this will be as quick as Amazon-shopping recommendations don’t get the massive complexity.”

All Watson Health partners will contribute data to the pool, subject to competitive considerations. Data will come only from patients who have consented to share their information and will be scrubbed of personally identifying features.

Apple will supply fitness, nutrition, heart-rate and other such information uploaded to some apps running on iPhones and iPads. In return, the Cupertino, Calif., company will gain greater penetration into the health-care sector through provider-focused apps built by IBM and sold to hospitals and clinics.

Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic will contribute data from devices for patients with diabetes and recovering from surgery. Those companies will gain tighter relationships with customers through patient-focused apps.

IBM will add to the data trove through Explorys and Phytel, two acquisitions that hold clinical information about more than 50 million patients. It will store and analyze the data in a so-called health cloud of computers, a network engineered to comply with health privacy laws. The network will encrypt sensitive data to thwart hackers.

IBM will work with Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to develop health apps for patients, to be sold through medical providers. For example, a patient who recently underwent a joint replacement and wore a J&J device could download a personal health coaching app. The app could provide personalized guidance between rehab visits and report to the provider on patient progress, said Sandra Peterson, J&J’s Group Worldwide Chairman.

IBM will also build a suite of enterprise wellness apps, the company said. IBM has a large foothold in large health-care companies. The company sells products or does business with 89 of the world’s top 100 health-care organizations, it says.

“The health-care system is highly fragmented with very little sharing of information, and outcomes are not acceptable and the cost is completely unacceptable,” said IBM Senior Vice President John Kelly. “As we see health care becoming more information-based, we see a role for IBM to step in.”

Wachter said IBM was well positioned to provide such apps because it appeared to be relatively neutral compared to medical records or insurance companies that might pool similar data.

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IBM Creates Watson Health to Analyze Medical Data

Apr 13, 2015 | New York Times Bits Blog

By Steve Lohr

IBM is taking its Watson artificial-intelligence technology into health care in a big way with industry partners, a pair of acquisitions and an ambitious agenda.

The initial three industry partners are Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic. On Monday afternoon, after the close of stock trading, IBM also announced it would buy two start-ups: Explorys, a spin-off from the Cleveland Clinic whose data on 50 million patients is used to spot patterns in diseases, treatments and outcomes; and Phytel, a Dallas maker of software to manage patient care and reduce readmission rates to hospitals.

The IBM plan, put simply, is that its Watson technology will be a cloud-based service that taps vast stores of health data and delivers tailored insights to hospitals, physicians, insurers, researchers and potentially even individual patients.

“We’re going to enable personalized health care on a huge scale,” said John E. Kelly, a senior vice president who oversees IBM’s research labs and new initiatives.

To date, IBM has done some individual projects using Watson technology with leading medical centers, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the Cleveland Clinic. But the creation of the Watson Health unit, Mr. Kelly said, is an effort to apply the technology to the mainstream of health care.

And while IBM has been commercializing Watson technology with tools for mining Twitter, weather and Internet of Things data, Mr. Kelly said Watson Health was the first move into a specific industry.

The Watson Health announcement is also the latest in flurry of initiatives IBM has announced this year that include new corporate partnerships as well as moves in cloud computing, data analytics and Watson. They are evidence that IBM is intent on investing for future growth, and showing it is doing so, in a year when its financial performance is likely to lag.

IBM has reported disappointing earnings recently, and Virginia M. Rometty, IBM’s chief executive, has told industry analysts and investors that 2015 would be a transition year in which new growth businesses like Watson did not yet overcome the profit erosion in some of its traditional hardware and software products.

IBM’s broad vision of combining and analyzing health data from varied sources to improve care has been around for decades. But the company and its partners say that technology, economics and policy changes are coming together to improve the odds of making the IBM venture a workable reality. They point to improvements in artificial intelligence, low-cost cloud computing and health policy that will reward keeping patients healthy instead of the fee-for-service model in which more treatments and procedures mean more revenue.

“Forces in health care are aligning as never before,” said Sandra E. Peterson, a group worldwide chairman at Johnson & Johnson in charge of information technology and new wellness programs. “It could be a unique moment and something like this could have real legs.”

A focus of the Johnson & Johnson partnership with IBM will be improving patient care before and after knee and hip replacements. The company will apply Watson technology to data sources ranging from patient records to digital fitness devices and smartphone applications, which can monitor movement and vital signs. “It will allow us to do much more integrated, personalized care,” Ms. Peterson said.

Medtronic, a large medical equipment maker, wants to use data intelligently to treat diabetes patients beyond providing them with its glucose monitors and insulin pumps. Medtronic devices are already digital and produce a lot of data, but the company plans to use the Watson software to spot patients trending toward trouble and automatically adjust insulin doses and send alerts to care providers and the patients themselves.

“The goal is dynamic, personalized care plans so you can delay or stop the progression of diabetes,” said Hooman Hakami, executive vice president in charge of Medtronic’s diabetes group.

Apple is increasingly a major supplier of health sensors, from iPhone apps to the Apple Watch. Its recently introduced HealthKit and ResearchKit software make it easier for applications and researchers to harvest health information from millions of owners of Apple products, with their permission. That data can now be plugged into Watson. “We want to be the analytics brains behind HealthKit and ResearchKit,” Mr. Kelly said.

The IBM initiative raises questions on how data is handled and about privacy. Mr. Kelly said the data scrutinized by Watson will typically be anonymized and often be read by Watson but not removed from hospital or health company data centers. “There will be no big, centralized database in the sky,” Mr. Kelly said.

Even critics of health information technology say the IBM effort holds promise. “If that future when all this stuff works is going to become real, then having some of the key players come together is the only way it’s going to happen,” said Dr. Robert M. Wachter, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco medical school and author of “The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age.” “This could be a pretty important step along the way.”

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IBM wants your smartwatch to talk to your doctor

Apr 13, 2015 | Washington Post

By Hayley Tsukayama

It may finally be time for your smartwatch to talk to your doctor.

Plenty of people wear fitness trackers. And plenty of doctors use electronic data to help with patient care. But it's also true that these silos of data often never meet, arguably limiting how useful any of it could be to patients.

IBM is aiming to change that, saying Monday that it's striking deals with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to collect and use more information from personal medical devices to help with patients' clinical care. Using its Watson supercomputer -- yes, of "Jeopardy!" fame -- IBM said that it will also be launching a whole Watson Health unit.

It's the latest move by IBM to chase the business potential that comes from processing massive amounts of data. The company has also recently announced the introduction of an "Internet of Things" business unitdedicated to helping companies collect and process information from sensors embedded in everything from city streets to clothing. And Watson's applications to the health field have long been discussed as a potential business for IBM.

John Kelly, a senior vice president at IBM Research and Watson architect, said that he thinks that the health-care industry is one of the most logical places to apply the supercomputer's power. "The cost of health-care continues to grow," he said. "We need better outcomes -- we see a number of diseases that are exploding, from diabetes to cancer."

Physicians, he said, are already starting to embrace the use of digital records and data to augment care, through electronic health records as well as by monitoring data sent out by cardiac device, insulin pumps or other smart devices implanted in people's bodies. Down the line some expectsmart pills, with embedded chips, to become far more commonplace.

But, of course, most consumers don't have that. What many do have, however, are fitness devices made by companies such as Fitbit, Jawbone or, soon, Apple. That information, however, often doesn't get communicated to physicians for a number of reasons -- including that there's a pretty bright line between the privacy protections we apply to clinical data and consumer fitness data.

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Wires

IBM launches new health unit, teams up with Apple, J&J, Medtronic

Apr 13, 2015 | Reuters

By Bill Rigby

International Business Machines Corp, deepening its partnership with Apple Incto make use of health information gathered by millions of Apple devices, is creating a unit dedicated to providing data analytics to the healthcare sector.

Its new Watson Health unit plans to aggregate health information from a large number of devices and providers in the cloud and offer insights to health companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic, which can then integrate results into services they sell to healthcare companies.

IBM said it will create headquarters for the unit in Boston with 2,000 employees, including about 75 medical practitioners. IBM also said it bought two health technology firms, Explorys and Phytel, for an undisclosed amount, to add to its skills in health data analytics.

IBM already has an arrangement to work with Apple on numerous enterprise applications, but is extending its co-operation in the area of health.

Watson Health - named for IBM's artificial intelligence creation, which beat previous champions of the U.S. quiz show Jeopardy - will bring cloud services and analytics to Apple's latest forays into the health business, HealthKit and ResearchKit.

HealthKit centralizes a user's health data provided by any number of fitness and health apps on a device, while ResearchKit is an open-source platform that lets researchers create diagnostic apps for use on the iPhone. One example is mPower, which measures hand tremors as a test for Parkinson's Disease.

Both services generate millions of points of data, and with customers' consent, IBM is looking to turn that anonymous data into meaningful signals for the treatment of illnesses or rehabilitation.

Johnson & Johnson, for example, said it will work with IBM on mobile-based coaching systems to help patients before or after surgery and will launch new health apps targeting chronic conditions.

Medical device maker Medtronic said it will use insights from Watson Health and work with IBM on personalized care plans for people with diabetes.

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IBM Joins With Apple, J&J to Analyze Health Data in the Cloud

Apr 13, 2015 | Bloomberg

By Alex Barinka and Cynthia Koons

IBM is joining with Apple Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic Plc to create a technology that will make it easier for health-care companies to analyze patient data.

International Business Machines Corp. announced a cloud-computing platform, called Watson Health Cloud, which can store and analyze anonymous patient data. A business unit will be created around the offering with at least 2,000 specialists, IBM said in a statement.

IBM has been seeking growth in newer areas like data analytics and cloud computing as tumbling demand for legacy hardware and services has dragged down revenue. The company has increasingly relied on industry-specific partnerships to help boost sales, like these latest tie-ups in health care.

“It’s a huge bet for IBM,” John Kelly, senior vice president for solutions portfolio and research, said in an interview. “We looked around for areas that were high growth where if we entered we could make a substantial difference and capture substantial share. None of us are satisfied with the outcomes in the health-care industry.”

IBM, based in Armonk, New York, also said it acquired medical data analytics company Explorys Inc. and patient-care and reimbursement software maker Phytel Inc. The terms weren’t disclosed.

Technology has made it easier for patients and physicians to gather large quantities of health data. Yet, the information is often fragmented across different electronic record systems, making it hard for researchers to leverage for large-scale studies.

Apple HealthKit
Apple has been one of those companies that lets consumers gather wellness data through its new smartwatch and the iPhone and iPad with its HealthKit health- and fitness-monitoring system. HealthKit, which synchronizes data from various health and fitness apps to work as a central dashboard for users, will start running on the Watson Health Cloud in the next few weeks, IBM said.

Apple ResearchKit, which lets medical researchers enroll consenting users into trials, will also move to IBM’s cloud.

IBM’s partnership with J&J will build off the health-care company’s existing platform called Patient Athlete. The self-guided, video-based training program announced in February helps patients prepare for joint replacement surgery.

“There’s an acute need in the hospital system to actually find ways to track outcomes as it relates to surgical intervention,” Sandra Peterson, group worldwide chairman of J&J, said in a telephone interview. The new IBM-enabled services will likely begin introduction starting next year.

Patient Engagement
Take a patient undergoing a knee operation. A tracking service like the one J&J and IBM envision would provide instructions for patients ahead of a procedure and then follow patients after surgery to monitor their recovery and encourage them to attend physical therapy, Peterson said. Ultimately, the program would be expanded to other surgical interventions beyond joint replacement and even to chronic diseases.

“Providing patient-specific interaction and engagement, including knowing their patient record and their patient history, you get better outcomes at the back end, you get quicker recovery,” she said.

Meantime, Medtronic and IBM expect to work together to use medical device and patient data to create close to real-time, personalized-care plans, according to the statement. The companies didn’t disclose when the offering will be available. Medtronic is the world’s biggest maker of heart-rhythm devices.

Most Vulnerable Cases
The combination of IBM’s informatics and Medtronic’s diabetes expertise will help the companies identify the most vulnerable patients, fine-tune individual treatment plans and guide development of systems that can take over for a damaged pancreas, said Amanda Sheldon, a spokeswoman for Medtronic.

IBM said it’s also in talks with hospitals and additional medical-device companies to use the Watson Health Cloud platform, which complies with patient privacy regulations known as HIPAA.

IBM isn’t the only player in the health-care space seeking to get its arms around “big data.” President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $215 million to create a cohort of a million volunteers whose genetic and health data can be used to develop personalized medicine.

Biogen Inc., maker of five multiple sclerosis drugs, is putting fitness trackers on patients’wrists to gather readings on activity and sleep. The company has also joined with Google Inc. to gather and analyze data in hopes of understanding the progression of the autoimmune disease.

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Financial Outlets

IBM’s new healthcare prescription: a standalone business unit

Apr 13, 2015 | Fortune

By Heather Clancy

Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic are key first partners for IBM Watson Health, which will devote at least 2,000 employees to medical analytics and other industry solutions.

IBM is taking a far more holistic approach to healthcare.

Its data analytics software already figures in prominent medical research trials with the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, and Sloan Kettering. Now, IBM is turning the underlying Watson technology into a cloud service, Watson Health Cloud, it will sell to doctors, hospitals, insurers and patients. That offering will be the centerpiece of a new dedicated, Boston-area business unit, IBM Watson Health.

“We are going into the healthcare business in a big way,” IBM Senior Vice President John Kelly told Fortune. “We all recognize that outcomes aren’t what we hope for. Costs are skyrocketing. On the other side, so much data is collected. … We want to provide better insights, for better outcomes.”

IBM estimates that between electronic medical records, digitized diagnostics, and wearable medical devices, the average person will leave a trail of more than 1 million gigabytes of health-related data in their lifetime. The goal of IBM’s new business unit is to turn that information into something useful.

“This platform, in the not so distant future, will become the largest site of healthcare data in the world,” Kelly said.

Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic are three prominent early partners that will use Watson Health Cloud as the foundation for their own medical intelligence services. The platform will underlie Apple’s HealthKit and REsearchKit applications; J&J will use it to create mobile apps that coach caregivers on pre-operative and post-operative procedures; and Medtronic will create a service for diabetes patients.

“We have a line at the door,” Kelly said, hinting that additional partnerships are soon to come.

IBM’s new division will quickly grow to 2,000 people, led by senior vice president Michael Rhodin. That includes consulting experts and up to 200 researchers who will move from other business units, Kelly said. One thing that won’t be moved (at least not yet): IBM systems and hardware for healthcare records.

The company is also staffing up through acquisitions. Among those disclosed this week: Explorys, a cloud services spinoff from the Cleveland Clinic that serves 26 healthcare systems; and Phytel, which sells patient management software.

More doctors than ever consider themselves proficient with electronic medical records, but find their existing options difficult to use, according to an Accenture survey of more than 2,600 physicians released Monday. The number who recommend gadgets for collecting personal health data has tripled; more than 80% encourage patients to take a role in updating their medical records.

“The industry needs to adapt to a new generation of patients who are taking proactive rolein their healthcare and expect to have real-time data at their fingertips,” said Kaveh Safavi, an Accenture consultant.

IBM’s revelation coincides with the healthcare industry’s biggest annual technology conference, taking place this week in Chicago. The sector spent approximately $60 billion on information technology in 2014. One notable investment area is cognitive computing to automate diagnostics and patient care decisions. “Because the stakes are so high to improve healthcare outcomes and economics, Forrester [Research] believes it will be the first industry to benefit from cognitive solutions,” notes the research firm in a February report about artificial intelligence.

Three major areas of focus for the next five years:Applications for clinical automationSoftware that helps eliminate medical fraud and wastePersonal solutions that help patients manage their own health

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IBM Adds Apple, Others to Watson Partnership, Unveils Watson Health Cloud

Apr 13, 2015 | TheStreet

By Chris Ciaccia

IBM(IBM - Get Report) is continuing to push Watson, itsartificial intelligence system, to the limits.

On Monday, it announced it's unveiling a Watson Health business unit, as well as a Watson Health Cloud platform that incorporates partnerships with Apple (AAPL - Get Report), Johnson & Johnson(JNJ - Get Report), Medtronic (MDT - Get Report) and others to give people a more complete look at their health.

By partnering with the aforementioned companies, IBM and the Watson Health Cloud (built off its artificially intelligent computing system), will be able to extract better data and feedback from both consumer and professional medical devices alike. Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM noted that as more fitness-related devices become available, the average person will likely wind up generating more than 1 million GB worth of health-related data.

"What this means is we're making a concentrated investment in both people and dollars in a turnkey business, " said Steve Gold CMO Watson Group, VP Partner Programs & VC Investments at IBM in an interview. "The Watson Health Cloud has three critical parts: data mart, the ability to harness the data, and the opportunity to build out actual applications to solve the problems." IBM and Apple are going to expand upon their existing partnership, first announced last year, by bringing cloud services and analytics to HealthKit and ResearchKit, both parts of iOS and the new Apple Watch.

HealthKit allows health-related apps talk to each other, while ResearchKit "makes it easy for researchers and developers to create apps that could revolutionize medical studies, potentially transforming medicine forever," according to Apple.

Also involved in partnering with the Watson Health Cloud are two diversified health giants, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ - Get Report) and Medtronic (MDT - Get Report).

New Brunswick, N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson will work with IBM to create systems based on pre-operative and post-operative care. The pharmaceutical giant may also launch new apps targeting chronic health problems, using Watson's capabilities as part of the partnership.

Medtronic will use the Watson Health Cloud to provide more personalized options for those with diabetes, receiving and analyzing information from insulin pumps, monitoring glucose levels and other diabetes-related treatments.

As part of the announcement, the software and service giant said its IBM Watson Health unit would be headquartered in Boston, while continuing to expand its Watson presence in New York City. The money IBM is spending, including the 2,000 consultants IBM will support as a result of this, is in addition to the $1 billion the company said it would spend on Watson-related investments last year, Gold said. IBM also announced it was acquiring Explorys and Phytel, two healthcare technology companies, to help boost IBM's Big Data and analytics business.

Terms were not disclosed for either acquisition.

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IBM Pulls Apple, J&J Into Watson Health Data Alliance

Apr 13, 2015 | Investors.com

By Ed Carson

IBM (NYSE:IBM) unveiled a new Watson Health business unit with several big-name partners and two small acquisitions, as it expands the health-care uses for its artificial intelligence computer.

The IT giant said Monday that it will work with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) to "help optimize consumer and medical devices for data collection, analysis and feedback."

IBM also announced that it bought Explorys and Phtyel, two medical software makers, to enhance its health care analytics.

The new IBM Watson Health unit will be based in the Boston area, with at least 2,000 consultants and other personnel.

The company said the new Watson Health Cloud will provide a platform and analytics for Apple's HealthKit and ResearchKit.

IBM and Apple last year formed a business apps alliance for iOS devices. The first industry-specific apps started rolling out in late 2014, with its first health-related apps released on April 1.

IBM and Johnson & Johnson will work on preoperative and postoperative coaching, with J&J also looking to launch health apps related to chronic conditions.

Medtronic will use Watson Health Cloud to develop personalized options for diabetes, analyzing patient info and data from Medtronic devices.

IBM has become aggressive in trying to make its "Jeopardy"-winning Watson a growing business, spending heavily and expanding partnerships.

In addition to the Watson Health and Apple business app deals, IBM has data analytics partnerships with Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and the Weather Channel. IBM will integrate and analyze Twitter data to give businesses insights into what their customers are thinking about their products.

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IBM buys health tech startups, launches Watson Health, expands Apple deal

Apr 13, 2015 | Seeking Alpha

By Eric Jhonsa

Looking to grab a bigger chunk of a burgeoning healthcare analytics market by offering more industry-specific solutions, IBM is buying Phytel, a provider of cloud-based patient data aggregation/analysis software, and Explorys, provider of a massive clinical database (said to consist of 315B datapoints) and a slew of analytics apps that run on top of them. Terms are undisclosed.

IBM declares Phytel will help it give healthcare providers "insights into patient health from data about patient behaviors and their engagement with care plans," and that Explorys will "accelerate the delivery of IBM Health Cloud and IBM Watson cognitive solutions to model and apply medical evidence and large scale analytics to data.

"Both companies are being added to a new Watson Health unit based out of Boston. The business aims to provide software/services that can surface insights from large volumes of anonymous personal health data. As part of the effort, Big Blue is launching Watson Health Cloud, a platform that allows this data to be "anonymized, shared and combined with a dynamic and constantly-growing aggregated view of clinical, research and social health data."

IBM's partnership with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been expanded to cover Apple's HealthKit (health/fitness data) and ResearchKit (medical research) frameworks, via Watson and Health Cloud. The latter will provide a data storage/aggregation platform for iOS apps using HealthKit and ResearchKit. In addition, IBM will "build a suite of enterprise wellness apps using HealthKit."

Also: 1) IBM is partnering with Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) to create diabetes management solutions that pair Medtronic's devices (and the data they produce) with IBM's analytics and cognitive computing tools. 2) IBM is partnering with Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) to "create intelligent coaching systems centered on preoperative and postoperative patient care, including joint replacement and spinal surgery."

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IBM (IBM) Announces Acquisition of Intelligence Cloud Company, Explorys

Apr 13, 2015 | StreetInsider

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced plans to acquire Explorys, a healthcare intelligence cloud company that has built one of the largest clinical data sets in the world, representing more than 50 million lives. The acquisition strengthens IBM's leadership position in healthcare analytics and cloud computing, and will help bolster its ability to extract and share deep insights to improve wellness and benefit patients.

Since its spin-off from the Cleveland Clinic in 2009, Explorys has secured a robust healthcare database derived from numerous and diverse financial, operational and medical record systems comprising 315 billion longitudinal data points across the continuum of care. This powerful body of insight will help fuel IBM Watson Health Cloud, a new open platform that allows information to be securely de-identified, shared and combined with a dynamic and constantly growing aggregated view of clinical, health and social research data.

Explorys provides secure cloud-based solutions for clinical integration, at-risk population management, cost of care measurement, and pay-for-performance. Headquartered in Cleveland, Explorys clients include some of the most prominent healthcare systems in the United States, together accounting for over $69 billion in care, 360 hospitals and more than 317,000 providers. Explorys' HIPAA-enabled cloud-computing platform is used by 26 healthcare systems and clinically integrated networks to identify patterns in diseases, treatments and outcomes. Its network includes Cleveland Clinic, Trinity Health, St. Joseph Health System, Mercy Health, Adventist Health System and many others with patients across the country. Market intelligence firm IDC just named Explorys global leader in Healthcare Clinical and Financial Analysis.

"As healthcare providers, health plans and life sciences companies face a deluge of data, they need a secure, reliable and dynamic way to share that data for new insight to deliver quality, effective healthcare for the individual," said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson. "To address this opportunity, IBM is building a holistic platform to enable the aggregation and discovery of health data to share it with those who can make a difference. With Explorys, IBM will accelerate the delivery of IBM Health Cloud and IBM Watson cognitive solutions to model and apply medical evidence and large scale analytics to data."

"Every encounter that a patient has across the continuum of care spins off a meaningful piece of data that can help tell the whole story about an individual's health to improve the quality and effectiveness of their care," said Stephen McHale, CEO and co-founder, Explorys. "Information is changing the way care is delivered and paid for. The combination of Explorys technology with IBM's powerful Health Cloud and Watson cognitive capabilities will expand the reach of health insights so that Big Data can finally be used more easily to transform healthcare. This relationship will not only accelerate but enhance many of the projects underway with our provider organizations."

Explorys is now part of IBM's new Watson Health unit, launched today. Its offerings complement and strengthen the IBM Watson Health Cloud platform and will empower IBM's vast ecosystem of clients, partners and medical researchers to surface new connections among diverse and previously siloed healthcare data sets. Access to these insights are expected to spur the creation of a new generation of data-driven applications and solutions designed to advance health and wellness.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

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IBM Announces Deals With Apple, Johnson And Johnson, And Medtronic In Bid To Transform Health Care

Apr 13, 2015 | Forbes

By Matthew Herper

Experts in health care and information technology agree on the future’s biggest opportunity: the creation of a new computational model that will link together all of the massive computers that now hold medical information. The question remains: who will build it, and how?

IBM IBM -0.29% is today staking its claim to be a major player in creating that cloud, and to use its Watson artificial intelligence – the one that won on the TV game show Jeopardy – to make sense of the flood of medical data that will result. The new effort uses new, innovative systems to keep data secure, IBM executives say, even while allowing software to use them remotely.

“We are convinced that by the size and scale of what we’re doing we can transform this industry,” says John Kelley, Senior Vice President, IBM Research. “I’m convinced that now is the time.”

Big Blue is certainly putting some muscle into medicine. Some 2,000 employees will be involved in a new Watson-in-medicine business unit. The Armonk, N.Y.-based computing giant is making two acquisitions, too, buying Cleveland’s Explorys, an analytics company that has access to 50 million medical records from U.S. patients, and Dallas’ Phytel, a healthcare services head of IBM’s Life Science company that provides feedback to doctors and patients for follow-up care. Deal prices were not disclosed.

It is also announcing some big partnerships:

•       Apple AAPL -0.2% will work to integrate Watson-based apps into its HealthKit and ResearchKit tool systems for developers, which allow the collection of personal health data and the use of such data in clinical trials.
•       Johnson & Johnson JNJ -1.48%, which is one of the largest makers of knee and hip implants, will use Watson to create a personal concierge service to prepare patients for knee surgery and to help them deal with its after effects.
•       Medtronic, the maker of implantable heart devices and diabetes products, will use Watson to create an “internet of things” around its medical gadgets, collecting data both for patients’ personal use and, once it’s anonymized, for understanding how well the implants are working. Initially, the focus is on diabetes.

IBM’s pitch is that it will be able to create a new middle layer in the health care system – linking the old electronic records systems, some of which have components dating back to the 1970s, with a new, cloud-based architecture, because of its deep breadth of experience.

And there is no doubt that there is a need for data science that can parse the explosion of information that will soon be created by every patient. Already, there is too much information for the human brain. “If you’re an oncologist there are 170,000 clinical trials going on in the world every year,” says Steve Gold, VP, IBM Watson.

The question is how ready Watson is to take on the challenge. IBM isn’t the only one that sees opportunity here. The billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong is aiming to create a system to do many of the same things with his NantHealth startup. Flatiron Health, a hot startup in New York, is creating analytics for cancer. The existing health IT giants, Cerner and Epic, both certainly have their eyes on trying to capture some of this new, interconnected market, lest it make them obsolete.

So far, Watson has been a black box when it comes to healthcare. IBM has announced collaborations with Anthem, the health insurer, and medical centers including M.D. Anderson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and The Cleveland Clinic. There are lots of positive anecdotal reports, but so far the major published paper from Watson is a computer science paper published by the Baylor College of Medicine that identified proteins that could be useful drug targets.

“I think that ultimately somebody’s going to figure out how to integrate all these sources of data, analyze them, sort the signal to noise, and when someone can do that, it will improve the health care system,” says Robert Wachter, the author of The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Ageand associate chair of medicine UCSF.

“Does this do that tomorrow? No. But do we need to create the infrastructure to do that? Yes. And are they probably the best-positioned company with the best track record to do this? I think so.”

–Sarah Hedgecock contributed reporting to this story.

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IBM acquires health tech startups Explorys and Phytel

Apr 13, 2015 | VentureBeat

By Jordan Novet

IBM announced today that it has acquired two startups, Explorys and Phytel, to beef up its health-focused data-analytics efforts.

The news comes as IBM makes a concerted push in health care. In addition to announcing the acquisitions, IBM today also announced a new Watson Health unit.

Both startups provided cloud technologies. IBM did not disclose the terms of either of the acquisitions.

“The acquisitions bolster IBM’s efforts to apply advanced analytics and cognitive computing to help primary care providers, large hospital systems, and physician networks improve health care quality and effect healthier patient outcomes,” IBM said in a statement today.

Cleveland, Ohio-based Explorys spun out of the Cleveland Clinic in 2009. The startup offered a cloud service for combining several types of data and handling business intelligence and predictive analytics.

Dallas-based Phytel offered cloud software that could hold various types of health data and provide insight into groups of patients for hospitals. Phytel also sold tools to help health professionals automate patient outreach.

The deals follow IBM’s acquisitions last month of AlchemyAPI and assets from startup Blekko.

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Tech Blogs

Apple partners with IBM Watson Health Cloud to bring secure cloud, data analytics to HealthKit and ResearchKit

Apr 13, 2015 | Apple Insider

By Mikey Campbell

Built around Watson technology, IBM's new service pulls in and analyzes massive amounts of real-time data provided by personal electronic devices, such as fitness trackers, connected medical devices, implantables and other sensors. The company will also expand its MobileFirst for iOS portfolio of apps to include HealthKit-powered software.

To better serve potential customers, IBM is establishing a dedicated business arm in Boston, Mass., called IBM Watson Health that will see 2,000 consultants, medical practitioners, clinicians, developers and researchers focus on building out Watson Health. The computing giant also purchased healthcare technology companies Explorys and Phytel to expand its current healthcare analytics capabilities.

As for Apple, IBM Watson Health Cloud will offer secure, open data storage for health information logged by iOS device owners using HealthKit or taking part in ResearchKit studies. The partnership also opens up access to IBM's data analytics capabilities.

"With Apple's groundbreaking ResearchKit, researchers can easily create apps that take advantage of the power of mobile devices to give them rich data from a diverse global population," said Apple SVP of Operations Jeff Williams. "Now IBM's secure cloud and analytics capabilities provide additional tools to help accelerate discoveries across a wide variety of health issues."

Apple recently rolled out in ResearchKit as a way to tap into the 700 million-strong iPhone install base for medical research purposes. With Watson Health Cloud, data from HealthKit and ResearchKit can be anonymized, shared and combined dynamically with existing healthcare data sets that were previously difficult to access.

"Our deep understanding and history in the healthcare industry will help ensure that doctors and researchers can maximize the insights available through Apple's HealthKit and ResearchKit data," said John E. Kelly III, senior vice president at IBM research and solutions portfolio. "IBM's secure data storage and analytics solutions will enable doctors and researchers to draw on real-time insights from consumer health and behavioral data at a scale never before possible."

In addition to cloud services, IBM also plans to create a suite of enterprise apps under the MobileFirst for iOS umbrella, further extending its groundbreaking partnership with Apple. The upcoming apps will help corporations manage employee health needs, from acute diseases to general fitness.

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IBM's Watson Health division will incorporate patient data from Apple

Apr 13, 2015 | PC World

By Fred O'Connor

The health information your Apple Watch collects could eventually end up in IBM’s Watson cloud computing platform, where medical researchers and doctors can tap it in the course of their work.

On Monday, IBM launched the Watson Health business unit, which will focus on providing the health care community with the analysis tools required to make sense of the many forms of data used in clinical care.

When developing a treatment plan for a patient, doctors must factor in clinical trials information, medical journal articles and, increasingly, data gathered from wearables and medical devices, said Steve Gold, vice president of the Watson Group. The Watson Health Cloud aims to combine these data streams and help physicians make better-informed care decisions, he said.

“Health care data is very unstructured. There’s exponentially more data available in text,” said Gold.

The business unit will work with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic on using Watson Health Cloud to analyze data provided by patients.

For clinicians who build apps with ResearchKit, Apple’s recently announced framework for creating mobile apps for medical research, IBM will provide a cloud computing platform to store and analyze this data. The information will be de-identified and people must opt-in to contribute their data, IBM said.

Johnson & Johnson, which manufactures medical devices, surgical robots and pharmaceuticals, will work with IBM to develop mobile apps to help people better recover from joint replacement and spinal surgery and manage chronic ailments like diabetes. Johnson & Johnson will store the data on Watson and use the platform’s cognitive abilities to answer patient questions.

Medtronic makes insulin pumps, glucose monitors and other devices for managing diabetes. Watson Health Cloud will receive information from these devices as well as from patients and analyze it to help doctors come up with more personalized treatments.

To beef up Watson’s analytics capabilities, IBM acquired two companies that use big data to develop individualized care plans. One them, Explorys, has a cloud platform that incorporates clinical and financial information from various hospitals and individual care providers to identify treatment patterns and outcomes. The other, Phytel, sells cloud services to help care providers better collaborate and coordinate patient care.

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IBM's Watson Health begins mining HealthKit data

Apr 13, 2015 | TecRadar.Pro

By Chuong Nguyen

In its latest push into the healthcare industry, IBM is creating a new business unit to analyze and store data for the healthcare sector. Based in Boston, IBM's Watson Health unit will aggregate health data from providers and devices to offer insights to healthcare companies like Johnson & Johnson and Metronic.

Additionally, IBM is expanding its existing partnership with Apple. Originally, IBM would work with Apple to develop enterprise apps as part of the MobileFirst deal, but with Watson Health, IBM is also working with Apple on its healthinitiative.

"The move, which complements IBM's new Watson Health business unit, will arm medical researchers with a secure, open data storage solution, as well as access to IBM's most sophisticated data analytics capabilities," the company said in a statement.

The partnership will help Apple analyze and understand data collected from its latest foray into the healthcare sector with apps such as HealthKit andResearchKit. The former collects user data from fitness devices and wearables, while the latter allows universities and research centers to efficiently conduct medical experiments with the participation of iPhone users.

"IBM will de-identify and store health data in a secure, scalable cloud system that enables researchers to access and share data in an open ecosystem environment, as well as have access to IBM's data-mining and predictive analytics capabilities," IBM said. IBM will store data on its Health Cloud. "Health and fitness app developers and medical researchers will be able to draw on data at a scale that until now has never been available."

With Johnson & Johnson, IBM will help create a mobile coaching system to help patients before and after surgery. IBM will also help Johnson & Johnson create new apps to help people with chronic conditions.

Medtronics hopes to leverage the insights from Watson Health to create personalized care plans for people with diabetes.

In addition to launching Watson Health, IBM also announced that it is acquiring two smaller health-related startups to boost its efforts in health data analytics. IBM acquired Explorys and Phytel, firms that provided data and business intelligence services, predictive analytics, and automated patient outreach tools.

IBM did not disclose the terms of the deals.

These deals are the latest in IBM's push into the health segment. Last month, IBM acquired AlchemyAPI.

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IBM's cognitive computer will help solve your health problems

Apr 13, 2015 | Engadget

By Jon Fingas

Just because you can collect a lot of information about your health doesn't mean that you can easily make sense of it. How do you connect the dots between, say, your smartwatch and your medical records? IBM thinks it has the answer: it's launching Watson Health Cloud, a platform that uses the company's cognitive computer system to help companies and doctors make decisions based on data that might otherwise prove daunting. They could recommend a change in your prescription, for example, or outline your surgery recovery plans.

Appropriately, IBM is teaming up with a handful of companies to both scoop up more data and provide those all-important answers. If you're using iOS gear and the Apple Watch, the info you collect in HealthKit and ResearchKit can help Watson with decisions; Johnson & Johnson is helping with a coaching system for surgery, and Medtronic is working on extra-personalized diabetes treatment. Don't be surprised if your physicians ask a machine for advice the next time you're faced with a complicated health problem.

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IBM announces new partnership w/ Apple for HealthKit & ResearchKit data

Apr 13, 2015 | 9to5 Mac

By Chance Miller

IBM this evening has announced a new dedicated health unit that will deepen its relationship with Apple. The service, called Watson Health, will use the data collected with Apple’s HealthKit and ResearchKit services to provide information to various other companies including Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic. From there, those companies can integrate the data into services they offer to healthcare companies. Apple will work to integrate Watson-based apps into HealthKit and ResearchKit for these purposes (via Forbes).

ResearchKit was announced by Apple in Marchand allows users to opt-in and contribute to scientific researching regarding health and medicine. ResearchKit is an open source platform that is supported by a handful of third-party apps already. HealthKit and its accompanying Health app on iOS 8, is a platform that essentially tracks data from a variety of third-party apps and displays int in a central location.

IBM claims that its new Watson Health platform will link old electronic health records with the new, cloud-based technology of HealthKit and ResearchKit. With so much research being done, Watson Health hopes to parse that information into manageable amounts for doctors, researchers, and patients alike.

“We are convinced that by the size and scale of what we’re doing we can transform this industry,” John Kelley, Senior Vice President, IBM Research said. “I’m convinced that now is the time.”

Apple and IBM announced an enterprise based partnership last year, but Watson Health adds another layer to the growing partnership.

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Health Care Outlets

IBM Watson makes major move into health IT

Apr 13, 2015 | Modern Healthcare

By Michael Sandler and Darius Tahir

IBM upped its entry in the health information technology sweepstakes Monday by unveiling three major partnerships and making two acquisitions designed to bolster its supercomputer Watson platform.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based computer giant said its Watson division will work withApple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to collect data, conduct analysis and give feedback on consumer and medical device applications. The company also will acquire Explorys, a cloud-computing system spun off from Cleveland Clinicthat now has 26 major health system clients, and Phytel, which sells cloud-based computer services.

The company said the moves will create about 2,000 new and existing jobs in Boston and New York City devoted to healthcare analytics. IBM dubbed the new healthcare analytics division Watson Health.

“Across all industries, our analytics is $17 billion and now we'll be taking that focus into healthcare. We're not dabbling.” said Dr. John Kelly, senior vice president, solutions portfolio and research at IBM.

IBM is stepping up its presence in what has become an increasingly crowded field of software vendors seeking to help healthcare systems cope with mounting pressure to allow data sharing between systems and with patients, Companies offering cloud-based data storage and analytics solutions include SAS Institute, athenahealth and numerous smaller firms.

IBM clearly felt the need to beef up its healthcare analytics capabilities. The more significant of the two acquisitions, whose terms were not disclosed, involved Explorys, which provides secure cloud-based solutions for clinical integration and serves 360 hospitals and more than 317,000 providers, according to IBM.

In addition to Cleveland Clinic, which spun off the firm in 2009, Explorys' cloud-computing platform is used by Trinity Health, St. Joseph Health System and 23 other systems to identify patterns in diseases, treatments and outcomes.

IBM hopes the acquisitions will provide Watson Health Cloud with better tools for aggregating and analyzing clinical, health and social research data. IBM plans to invest $1 billion into the effort. Explorys “is only a small company currently,” Kelly said. “They are world class, top-ranked analytics company.”

Meanwhile, the partnerships forged with Apple, J&J and Medtronic could help IBM play a significant role in the emerging personal health information market. For instance, the IBM-Apple partnership will apply cloud services and analytics to HealthKit and ResearchKit, which are features on the new Apple Watch. Watson Health will allow users to upload de-identified personal health data for research purposes.

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Massive IBM deal gives Watson purpose and puts it in pole position to transform healthcare

Apr 13, 2015 | MedCity News

By Chris Seper

For years Watson wandered in the wilderness of healthcare while IBM sought any partner it could to feed a beast that simply wanted more medical data.

Watson grew up all the way today, announcing a deal Monday at HIMSS 2015 that sharpens completely a growing focus of Watson in the medical industry. IBM has given the initiative a name: Watson Health.

The deals and partnerships are an exclamation point that gives more purpose not just to Watson but to Apple as well – through the deal Research Kit suddenly becomes more relevant. It also bundles in traditional health players like Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic and grabs two young stars in health data and cloud services – Explorys and Phytel (IBM acquired them both), respectively.

There are some question marks and assumptions – part of future could include counting on Millennials to donate their data, for example.
But this solidifies a specific role for IBM in some of the central medical issues of our time: personalized medicine. IBM will use Watson as a cloud-based provider of health data to deliver precision information to hospitals, insurance companies, researchers and patients.
As part of the announcement at HIMSS:
Apple will work with IBM to use cloud services and analytics for HealthKit and ResearchKit
Johnson & Johnson will partner with IBM to create coaching systems in areas including joint replacement and spinal surgery, and launch new health apps targeting chronic conditions
Medtronic will use Watson to provide personalized care management solutions for diabetes patients. Watson will analyze patient information from devices including insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors

Plus, the acquisitions get IBM a company packed with data and another business that knows what to do with that data when it hits the cloud.

Cleveland Clinic-backed Explorys holds data on 50 million patients at 360 hospitals and more than 317,000 providers. Dallas-based Phytel, meanwhile, uses cloud-based services that help healthcare providers and care teams work together.“The lesson is scale – period,” said Steve McHale, Explorys’ CEO, said at IBM’s HIMSS announcement. “We had a vision of scale we opened the doors and stuck to our guns. We got folks to share data. We become very disciplined stewards and continued to build trust with the healthcare providers who are our partners. We stay aligned with those providers. IBM has that same level of trust with providers.

McHale said the opportunity for IBM with the combination of Explorys and the others in this deal “is exponential.”

When IBM started snooping around health several years ago, Watson was like a big roaming bear fresh out of hibernation gobbling any berries it could (except its meal was data).

As a testimony to how hungry and scattershot IBM was, I got a meeting with IBM’s venture arm when then-MedCity Media was raising capital. The interest was largely in understanding the potential of ingesting MedCity News’ original content.

Time and learning helped IBM evolve Watson, though. It focused on deals with Cleveland Clinic,Mayo Clinic and AirStrip. Even the Apple partnerships were clearly about health and by early this year there was clear momentum for a real direction.

Mike Rhodin, senior vice president for IBM Watson, said the company will continue to acquire companies that help the Watson Health mission. Rodin said IBM made these agreements because IBM better needed to mix its cognitive analytics with more traditional analytics methods, and to combine both the data Watson already had with the more siloed health data that sits within different health systems (enter Explorys).

“We can move beyond looking at certain diseases and look at health more holistically,” Rhodin said.

Finding unique approaches to capturing fresh data (and adding to IBM’s $17 billion analytics business) is far from over. For example, Rhodin envisions a partnership that would entice Millennials to take part in “data philanthropy” – donating their personal health information for their own health benefit but also a greater purpose – to be ingested by Watson and its new, formidablepartners.

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IBM announces two key acquisitions, launches new business unit

Apr 13, 2015 | HealthcareDIVE

By Katie Bo Williams

IBM today announced the acquisition of leading population health management software provider Phytel to help bolster the company's analytics offerings; and of big data cloud service Explorys, a former Cleveland Clinic spin-off.

The acquisitions will become part of IBM's new Watson Health unit, also launched today at HIMSS. Watson Health, to be headquartered in Boston, MA, is a dedicated company arm to help healthcare organizations employ meaningful analytics to improve outcomes. The unit includes the development of the secure Watson Health Cloud.

IBM also announced new, non-exclusive partnerships with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to leverage information collected from personal health devices.Dive Insight:

These were some meaty announcements from IBM late on Monday afternoon at HIMSS, but they all add up to one thing: IBM is trying to corner the market on data from wearables. It has acquired two companies that bolster its ability to extract meaningful data from the glut of personal health information pouring out of these still-new devices and it has created both the company and the cloud platform to aggregate, analyze and ultimately share that data securely.

"All this data can be overwhelming for providers and patients alike, but it also presents an unprecedented opportunity to transform the ways in which we manage our health," said John E. Kelly III, IBM senior vice president, solutions portfolio and research. "Only IBM has the advanced cognitive capabilities of Watson and can pull together the vast ecosystem of partners, practitioners and researchers needed to drive change, as well as to provide the open, secure and scalable platform needed to make it all possible."

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Online Outlets

IBM's Watson Health Cloud is on a mission to reduce healthcare costs

Apr 13, 2015 | Mashable

By Lance Ulanoff

Is information the answer to every problem? Perhaps, as IBM sees it, only with the right amount of access and analysis.

The company is about to put IBM Watson, the Jeopardy-playing, dinner-cooking, cloud-based supercomputer in a blender with billions of healthcare data bits. The result: Watson Health Cloud.

The goal is a recalibration of healthcare costs through always-available access to information about personal health and how it compares to health details about millions of anonymized others.

"We believe a very large portion of healthcare spend is preventable," said John Kelly, IBM's SVP of solutions research, in an interview with Mashable. "Costs can improve dramatically through these technologies." Kelly is so confident in Watson Health Cloud that he thinks it can not only halt the growth of healthcare costs, but also reverse them.

Regardless of whether IBM can achieve this lofty goal, it's not alone in its efforts. The company acquired up two healthcare companies, Phytel and Explorys, the latter of which has roughly one-sixth of the U.S. population's healthcare data, according to IBM. The company would not reveal how much it paid for the private firms.

IBM is also partnering with Johnson & Johnson and, notably,Apple, which announced ResearchKit last month, a platform that lets researchers leverage data captured on iPhones to help them fight diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes. Watson Health Cloud will work with both ResearchKit and HealthKit, which Apple unveiled as part of iOS 8.

If a user agrees, the data collected by HealthKit and ResearchKit is exposed to those designing wellness apps, but many companies accessing that data have no access to other data. "So we’ll put that cloud right behind ResearchKit and HealthKit so your data can be compared to the data of millions of people to have better healthcare," Kelly explained.

IBM and Apple are already partnered on industry-specific mobile solutions. While IBM Watson is ingesting the Explorys data, it will likely take a few weeks for Apple's products to have access to the Watson Health Cloud.

In practice, consumers won’t access all this data as much as companies like Johnson & Johnson will be using it to improve on healthcare solutions for mobile devices like the iPhone (and the Apple Watch, when it ships).

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IBM Launches Watson Health Cloud, So Your Doctor Can See Your Wearable Data

Apr 13, 2015 | Co.exist

By Neil Ungerleider

Soon, your doctor may be able to see real-time health information from your Apple Watch or Fitbit, and IBM's Watson—the smart computing system that once won Jeapordy!—could be the software that makes it happen.

The company announced a new product today—Watson Health Cloud—that's designed to give physicians, researchers, insurers, and health technology companies secure accessto mountains of patient data. IBM is betting that putting that data in your doctor's hands could both improve medical care and speed the pace of health research.

The launch includes initial partnerships with Apple (which entered into a relationship with IBM last year aimed at enterprise customers), Johnson & Johnson, and medical device giant Medtronic. IBM also acquired two new companies to help ramp up: the Cleveland Clinic's big data spin-off Explorys and electronic medical record software provider Phytel. A new, 2000-employee Watson Health division will be set up in the Boston area.

Upon launch this week, Watson Health’s first initial use cases will be include analytics andcloud storage products for Apple’s HealthKit and ResearchKit platforms for Apple Watch and iOS, intelligent coaching systems for physicians and nurses in conjunction with Johnson & Johnson, and personalized care systems for diabetes patients in partnership with Medtronic. Other health partnerships are in the works, the company says.

Watson Health Cloud also kicks off a trend industry analysts have been expecting for years: Doctors getting access to real-time health data. The company is in the middle of a pivot into one of the world’s largest cloud service providers, and IBM is banking their long-term survival on Watson and similar products. Becoming the preferred real-time data provider of hospitals, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies ensures them a massive future revenue stream.

Because of the growing use of sensors, implantable devices, and personal trackers, the company says that the average person is now set to generate more than one million gigabytes of health data—the equivalent of more than 300 million books—in their lifetime.

Kyu Rhee, IBM’s chief health director, told Co.Exist: "When I first began practicing with patients at Cedars-Sinai, it was all paper-based. But we’re seeing a transformation now in health and health care, because analytics are empowering. There’s simply so much structured and unstructured data to work with." He added that Watson Health was designed to help use the same data to improve treatment for both individuals and entire population groups.

Several other health care providers and research institutes already have relationships with Watson thanks to past pilot projects in the oncology and medical research world; these include the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

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IBM Partners With Apple, J&J, Medtronic To Create New Health-based Offerings

Apr 13, 2015 | RTT News

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM: Quote) said Monday that it is establishing a Watson Health Cloud that will provide a secure and open platform for physicians, researchers, insurers and companies focused on health and wellness solutions.

The HIPAA-enabled Watson Health Cloud will enable secure access to individualized insights and a more complete picture of the many factors that can affect people's health.

IBM also said it will establish a dedicated business unit - IBM Watson Health, to be headquartered in the Boston, Massachusetts, area.

The new unit will include IBM's existing Smarter Care and Social Programs practice, which was created three years ago following the acquisition of CuramSoftware, a leading provider of health and social program management solutions.

IBM said it is collaborating with Apple Inc. (AAPL), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ:Quote) and Medtronic plc (MDT: Quote) to create new health-based offerings that leverage information collected from personal health, medical and fitness devices.

IBM and Apple will expand their partnership with IBM Watson Health Cloud to provide a secure cloud platform and analytics for Apple's HealthKit and ResearchKit.

Johnson & Johnson will collaborate with IBM to create intelligent coaching systems centered on preoperative and postoperative patient care, including joint replacement and spinal surgery. Solutions will be mobile-based, accessing the Watson Health Cloud and leveraging IBM Watson's cognitive capabilities. Johnson & Johnson will also look to launch new health apps targeting chronic conditions.

IBM and Medtronic will work together to combine powerful analytics and cognitive computing with diabetes medical devices and health data to develop a new generation of personalized diabetes management solutions. People using Medtronic diabetes solutions could benefit from new solutions developed in collaboration with IBM's newly-formed Watson Health unit.

Additionally, IBM said it has reached agreement to acquire two healthcaretechnology companies - Cleveland-based Explorys and Dallas-based Phytel.

A spin-off from the Cleveland Clinic in 2009, Explorys' secure cloud-computing platform is used by 26 major integrated healthcare systems to identify patterns in diseases, treatments and outcomes.

Phytel develops and sells cloud-based services that help healthcare providers and care teams work together to ensure care is effective and coordinated in order to meet new healthcare quality requirements and reimbursement models.

The acquisitions will bolster IBM's efforts to apply advanced analytics and cognitive computing to help primary care providers, large hospital systems and physician networks improve healthcare quality and effect healthier patient outcomes.

Terms were not disclosed for either deal.

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