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 IBM
launches new health unit, teams up with Apple, J&J,
Medtronic
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[April 14, 2015]
By Bill Rigby
SEATTLE (Reuters) - 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.
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 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.
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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.
(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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