IBM launches health initiative around Watson

IBM has launched a new business centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts for its Watson Health initiative.

With the initiative, IBM is looking to leverage a major opportunity in health services by setting up a new business in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts' Kendall Square, close to companies in biotech, pharma, big-time research, not to mention MIT.

Watson has acquired a reputation for problem solving but now IBM needs to show the world it can wring revenue and profits out of Watson. After setting up a business unit around Watson in 2014, the company had now launched an effort within that unit to apply Watson to big-time health problems.

The new facility would house 700 people initially, but the count would rise to 1,000 in a few years, according to Mike Rhodin, senior vice president of the IBM Watson Group.

IBM had said Watson would take on several key vertical industries, including insurance and retail. According to commentators, Watson Health was the first official effort attacking one of those verticals.

With the initiative IBM, which had been on an acquisition spree would integrate several health-related purchases into this effort, including Explorys, with its data set based on 50 million people, and Phytel, a provider of health management software.

Meanwhile, IBM also added to its solutions portfolio with the introduction of IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance and IBM Watson Care Manager.

The IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance would help biomedical companies bring medical innovations to market more efficiently.

"The IBM Watson news announced today blends strategic Watson solutions and tactical moves designed to strengthen the company's position in critical healthcare areas," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, www.eweek.com reported.

"The most ambitious of these is probably the new Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance. Though it's an ungainly brand, the new service's focus on enhancing the processes required for bringing new pharmaceutical products to market could eventually improve the lives of tens of thousands of patients."

IBM Watson Care Manager, a popular health solution integrates capabilities from Watson Health, Apple's HealthKit and ResearchKit, a software framework designed by Apple to make facilitate researchers to conduct studies using an iPhone. It allowed medical professionals to factor a broad range of determinants into a personalised patient engagement programme.

"IBM is dedicated to developing market leading, industry-specific cloud offerings that meet each sectors' unique needs," said Rhodin in a statement. "This newest expansion of the IBM Watson Health Cloud makes it an even more robust and flexible platform for the life sciences and healthcare industries and explains its rapid adoption among leading organizations in these fields."