ORLANDO, Fla., Feb.
20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- At the 2017 Health Information
Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Orlando, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today introduced
expanded capabilities for the Watson Platform for Health Cloud and
a specialized Watson Health Consulting Services unit dedicated to
helping clients and partners across the healthcare ecosystem
capture the business opportunity of cognitive computing in
healthcare.
Watson Platform for Health on the IBM Cloud is the
Only Designed-for-Health Data Platform
To date, the adoption of cloud in the healthcare industry has
been a slow process due to concerns around security, regulatory and
compliance. Cloud providers may offer the raw materials, but then
customers must assemble and then validate materials themselves.
Global adoption for cloud services in healthcare are expected to
grow from $3.73 billion in 2015 to
nearly $10 billion by 2020, according
to MarketsandMarkets. The promise of cloud and cognitive
capabilities has become a leading discussion in every IT strategy
meeting as a platform for innovation in the future of healthcare
delivery.
"As our clients look to accelerate the digitization of business
processes, unlock new value from their health data and infuse new
intelligence to transform their enterprise, they need a cloud
platform that is built to specifically address the unique needs of
the healthcare and life sciences industry," said Lori Steele, IBM Global Managing Director of
Healthcare and Life Sciences.
New Watson Health cloud offerings and capabilities include
enhancements to the HIPAA-enabled data-platform-as-a-service, a new
GxP edition of the platform, and new data center locations. These
enhancements aim to help business executives and enterprise data
scientists harness the power of big data and cognitive – further
extending the reach of Watson Platform for Health, the industry's
only cloud data platform designed expressly for health and life
sciences organizations.
"Stakes are high for health data, so a health cloud environment
needs to be designed differently than one built to host email or
online shopping," said Rebecca
Buisan, Director of Offering Management, Watson Platform for
Health. "Security and safeguards at all levels are essential. But
to help speed time to compliance – a platform needs to help clients
address key industry regulatory needs – whether audit, consent
management, de-identification, data governance or GxP practices.
Combine that with the advanced analytics and Watson cognitive
services, this data platform offers a place where Health and Life
Sciences companies can truly innovate."
That is why IBM is expanding Watson Platform for Health's
capabilities with enhancements to its HIPAA-enabled data platform,
our new GxP edition, additional geography locations, and more,
including:
Watson Platform for Health: the industry's first
data platform designed specifically for health and life sciences
development to help ease data ingestion, curation, and
normalization – making it faster to get from data to insight. New
enhancements include IBM Mobile Foundation support, to ease the
process of building HIPAA-enabled mobile applications that work
with Watson Health.
Watson Platform for Health GxP: a data platform
fully managed under the Watson Health Quality Management System to
help organizations reduce the risks, costs and time associated with
compliance to FDA and global regulations.
IBM Watson Annotator for Clinical Data: A
cognitive service that allows companies to unlock critical
information in unstructured data – such as physician notes,
discharge summaries, and pathology reports – using natural language
processing to deliver domain specific insights on information such
as symptoms, disease, allergies, and medication to help drive
insights for care.
Global Expansion: Watson Health is pleased to
announce availability of the Cloud Platform for Health in not only
in the US, but also in the Softlayer data center in London. IBM recently announced it was tripling
its Cloud Data Center capacity in London.
Lynne Dunbrack, Research Vice
President at IDC Health Insights, commented: "IBM is working to
make sure the future of cognitive computing is distributed
throughout and customized to healthcare and life sciences. Watson
Health's industry-specific cloud and consulting service, along with
mobile solutions using Watson's technology platform, are the right
kinds of steps to support broad adoption of cognitive technologies
by providers, payers and other healthcare organizations."
The Watson Health Consulting Services Unit Uncovers the
Potential of Cognitive Healthcare
The new Watson Health Consulting Services unit is focused on
helping clients transform healthcare through leveraging the power
of cognitive solutions. The new global group includes a variety of
consulting professionals who specialize in healthcare data science,
analytics, machine learning, advanced population health, real-world
evidence, clinical workflow, drug discovery process design and
development, user experience, clinical workflow, and more. The team
works with clients around the globe to form new strategies to
improve care, identify how cognitive solutions fit into these
strategies, quickly implement these new cognitive solutions, and
transform their processes and operations to fully take advantage of
the new these new capabilities.
With deep expertise in the deployment of cognitive health
solutions, the Watson Health Consulting Services unit builds on
IBM's decades of experience in enterprise business consulting to
create new data-driven efficiencies in the health system. In order
to derive meaningful insights from growing bodies of health
information, the Watson Health Consulting Services unit will help
healthcare and Life Science organizations redesign processes from
care delivery to drug development to marketing and customer
relationship management. While the professionals in the new unit
will focus exclusively on delivering the transformation enabled by
our Watson Health solutions, they also draw on the skills and
global delivery capability of the 130,000 IBM Global Business
Services professionals around the world.
"The launch of the new Watson Health Consulting Services unit is
about helping our clients transform healthcare, in quality,
improved access, patient satisfaction and lower cost in the
cognitive healthcare era," said Matt
Porta, Vice President and Partner for IBM Watson Health
Consulting Group.
HIMSS17 is February 19-23 at the
Orange County Convention Center.
Visit IBM Watson Health (booth #1809); Merge, an IBM Company (booth
#1712); and Truven Health Analytics, an IBM Company (booth #4861).
Go online to learn about IBM Watson Health at HIMSS17 and follow
IBM's Watson Health's social media channels #IBMHealthcare,
#WatsonHealth, and #HIMSS17 for on-site activity updates,
times and locations, as well as timely insights from the Watson
Health ecosystem.
About IBM Watson Health
Watson is the first
commercially available cognitive computing capability representing
a new era in computing. The system, delivered through the cloud,
analyzes high volumes of data, understands complex questions posed
in natural language, and proposes evidence-based answers. Watson
continuously learns, gaining in value and knowledge over time, from
previous interactions. In April 2015,
the company launched IBM Watson Health and the Watson Health Core
cloud platform (now Watson Platform for Health). The new unit will
help improve the ability of doctors, researchers and insurers to
innovate by surfacing insights from the massive amount of personal
health data being created and shared daily. The Watson Platform for
Health can mask patient identities and allow for information to be
shared and combined with a dynamic and constantly growing
aggregated view of clinical, research and social health data. For
more information on IBM Watson, visit: ibm.com/watson. For more
information on IBM Watson Health, visit: ibm.com/watsonhealth.
Media Contact:
Kristi Bond
IBM Media Relations
(802) 345-8313
Kristi.bond@us.ibm.com
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-unveils-expanded-watson-platform-for-health-cloud-capabilities-and-introduces-the-watson-health-consulting-services-unit-at-himss17-300409960.html
SOURCE IBM