The two companies are announcing a new partnership to develop custom care management services for CVS customers with chronic illnesses, and to then license the new technologies to insurance companies.
Advertisement
This IBM partnership is the latest in a string of Watson system collaborations including partnerships with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic.
“The capabilities of the IBM Watson Health Cloud, when coupled with CVS Health’s insights into medical utilization and patient behavior, could prove transformative for the industry”, Mike Rhodin, senior vice president at IBM Watson, told Forbes.
The Watson technology will help CVS Health employees provide guidance to patients and work with primary care doctors to treat patients dealing with chronic diseases such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
In the joint venture, Watson, IBM’s cognitive computing platform, will compile, process and compute information from medical health records, pharmacy and medical claims information, and fitness devices. “The U.S. spends an estimated $2.9 trillion on healthcare, of which 86% goes to address chronic diseases”, IBM stated.
CVS is best known for its drug stores and pharmacies, but also has health clinics and the Caremark pharmacy benefit management unit.
The Watson Health Cloud makes patient data anonymous by stripping out personal identification fields in a database.
IBM’s Watson computing system can analyze large amounts of data, interpret and evaluate data, and even build knowledge over time.
IBM’s supercomputer is expected to offer CVS’s healthcare providers a more holistic view of each patient, with the ability to coordinate across different provider organizations and detect signs of potential clinical declines in patients.
Advertisement
“CVS Health and IBM are both committed to improving health and finding ways to engage individuals in their well-being through the use of information and technology”, said Troyen A. Brennan, MD, EVP and Chief Medical Officer for CVS Health.
