Dive Brief:
- IBM has completed its acquisition of Phytel, a provider of integrated population health management software, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was announced at HIMSS last month.
- The company also recently acquired Explorys, a Cleveland Clinic spinoff, which claims one of the largest clinical data sets in the world. The two new acquisitions will be part of IBM's new Watson Health Unit.
- The new unit will offer cloud-based access to its Watson supercomputer for analyzing healthcare data to improve healthcare quality.
Dive Insight:
"The acquisition of Phytel supports our goal to advance the quality and effectiveness of personal healthcare by enabling secure access to individualized insights, and a more complete picture of the many factors that can affect people's health," stated Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson in a news release.
Healthcare Dive's take on the announcements at HIMSS was that the company is trying to corner the market on data from wearables, probably the hot topic of the conference on the tech front. The two acquisitions, Phytel and Explorys, both bolster IBM's ability to extract meaningful data from the glut of personal health information pouring out of these still-new devices. And with Watson Health, it has created both the company and the cloud platform to aggregate, analyze and ultimately share that data securely.
Want to read more? You may enjoy this story about the latest Watson Health partnership with Epic and the Mayo Clinic.