HIMSS started with the eye popping news that IBM acquired two analytics companies in one day. Phytel, a leading Population Health Management company and Explorys, a predictive software company will be incorporated into IBM Watson.
Rumors are that IBM paid an aggregate of $750MM for both. IBM is now clearly making a big push into healthcare IT. As part of the acquisition announcement, IBM also created a dedicated business unit – IBM Watson Health (to be headquartered in Boston, MA) – featuring a HIPAA-enabled, open platform Watson Health Cloud.
Will other big, diversified technology companies make moves to respond?
Analytics clearly remains a “hot” sector and we saw some interesting companies. Data liquidity is a big deal. Government, insurers, and providers need to share data and the only way to do it is to have these data sets talk to each other. Adding wearables/patient data to the mix means interoperability will see a renewed momentum.
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