Dive Brief:
- IBM and Watson Health unveiled this week a medical imaging collaborative aimed at bringing cognitive imaging into daily practice.
- The effort -- made up of more than 15 partners health systems, academic medical centers and tech companies -- seeks to help providers address cancers, diabetes, eye health, heart disease, and other related conditions.
- Members of the collaborative plan to use Watson tech to extract insights from unstructured imaging data and combine that with a broad variety of data from other sources. The efforts may help physicians make personalized care decisions relevant to a specific patient while building a body of knowledge to benefit broader patient populations.
Dive Insight:
Foundational members for the collaborative include Agfa HealthCare, Anne Arundel Medical Center, Baptist Health South Florida, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Hologic, ifa systems AG, inoveon, Radiology Associates of South Florida, Sentara Healthcare, Sheridan Healthcare, Topcon, UC San Diego Health, University of Miami Health System, University of Vermont Health Network and vRad as well as Merge Healthcare, an IBM company.
The company stated information may include data from EHRs, radiology and pathology reports, lab results, doctors’ progress notes, medical journals, clinical care guidelines and published outcomes studies.
Initial plans include training Watson and evaluating potential new offerings in a variety of patient care environments ranging from stand-alone ambulatory settings to integrated health delivery networks. The aim in doing so is to gather data based on diverse real-world experience and to share findings to inform how the medical community might reduce operational and financial inefficiencies, improve physician workflows, and adopt a patient-focused approach to improving patient care and outcomes. Further, medical experts could determine how to integrate Watson into the existing health IT systems of the imaging technology companies in the collaborative.