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

(RTTNews) - International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) 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 Curam Software, a leading provider of health and social program management solutions.

IBM said it is collaborating with Apple Inc. (AAPL), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Medtronic plc (MDT) 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 healthcare technology 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.