IBM Acquires Two Health Care Firms To Help Build Watson Health Unit

IBM has acquired two healthcare firms, Phytel and Explorys, to boost its analytics offerings and cognitive computing, and to form part of its new Watson Health unit. The acquisitions of both companies strengthens IBM's leadership position in healthcare analytics space, will help build IBM Watson Health Unit. Financial details of both acquisitions were not disclosed.

Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson said in a statement that: “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,” also added that: “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.” 

Dallas-based Phytel is a leading population health management vendor that tap into the electronic health records of hospitals to track and manage the health and care of patients, while Cleveland-based Explorys is a healthcare intelligence cloud firm that has built one of the largest clinical data sets in the world. 

Explorys has compiled one of the largest healthcare databases in the world, derived from numerous and diverse financial, operational, and medical record source systems. 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. 

Once completed, Explorys will become part of IBM Watson Health, its offerings complement and will fuel the IBM Watson Health and empower the company's vast ecosystem of clients,partners and medical researchers.

Mike Rhodin, vice president, IBM Watson, said in a written statement that: "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," and added that: "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." 

The acquisitions is subject to government regulatory review and expected to close this year. 

Image Credit: Reuters