In recent days, IBM announced more news about Watson Health, the business unit officially opened in April 2015 with the aim of exploiting its Watson cognitive computing system in the medical field. Deborah DiSanzo was named general manager of Watson Health, which will have its headquarters in Kendall Square, an area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. IBM also announced new collaborations and new cloud services.
Deborah DiSanzo has an experience of over 30 years of work at the intersection of health care and technology. Her previous position was as CEO of Philips Healthcare, a business unit of the Dutch corporation devoted to that kind of activity.
IBM is expanding the services and solutions that use the Watson Health Cloud platform to provide better and better uses of its cognitive computing system. This time Watson announced IBM Cloud Health for Life Sciences Compliance to help biomedical companies develop more efficient innovations in the medical field and IBM Watson Care Manager to integrate Watson Health with Apple’s HealthKit and ResearchKit solutions to allow medical personnel to follow patients better.
As for collaborations, IBM announced that Boston Children’s Hospital, Columbia University, ICON plc, Sage Bionetworks and Teva Pharmaceuticals will join the group of companies and various institutions that are already leveraging in various ways the Watson Health Cloud’s capabilities.
In particular, Teva Pharmaceuticals was chosen for a new strategic partnership called Foundational Life Sciences Partners. The company will be the first at global level in the pharmaceutical field to use the Watson Health Cloud platform to offer benefits to patients and health care providers.
These collaborations will increase the possibility to provide healthcare workers relevant information on patients and to create for them personalized therapies. IBM will have access to additional data to improve the capabilities of its Watson Health system to suggest the most appropriate solutions in each case.
In the new headquarters in Cambridge, more than 700 IBM employees will work to make Watson Health Cloud work at its best and keep optimal relationships with partners. IBM intends to open an interactive Watson Health Experience Center to enable its clients to discover this cognitive computing system and understand how it can help transform their business.
IBM also wants to open a medical research laboratory in the headquarters to further deepen the company’s commitment in this field. So far we have been used to long times for medical research but the Watson Health system’s ability to analyze massive amounts of data in a short time will greatly reduce them.
