That’s thanks to a new partnership announced Thursday by IBM and CVS Health that aims to use predictive analytics and Watson cognitive computing to improve care management for those with chronic diseases.
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IBM is also teaming up with CVS Health to harness the power of the Watson supercomputing brain to bring radical changes in how the care of patients with chronic conditions is managed.
“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, seniors vice president at IBM Watson said.
Teaming up with CVS – which has more than 7,800 pharmacies and more than 900 MinuteClinics – will give IBM a chance to unleash its Watson Health platform on the massive population of patients served by the pharmacy giant.
IBM’s latest partnership with CVS Health seeks to identify ill individuals who would benefit from proactive healthcare. The company has since formed partnerships with several healthcare companies, including @Point of Care and GenieMD to help doctors make better recommendations to individual patients. Those diseases include hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. “At CVS Health, we’re committed to improving health and transforming healthcare delivery through the use of information and technology and this partnership is one more example of how we’re helping people on their path to better health”. There are also almost 1,000 MinuteClinic walk-in medical clinics available at CVS/pharmacy retail stores.
IBM customers like CVS, as well as partners and medical researchers, can then use the data to find new connections with previously siloed healthcare data sets and spur the creation of data-driven applications designed to advance health and wellness.
Health care experts have long called for better communication among health care providers – something that has been stymied by the use of various, incompatible electronic record formats.
The Watson supercomputer analyzes high volumes of data and processes information more like a human than a computer-by understanding natural language, generating hypotheses based on evidence, and learning as it goes. The grant for the program was valued at $1.5 million.
The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, August 3rd. MinuteClinic will continue its standard practice of sending patient visit summaries to primary care providers who are not affiliated with these participating health care organizations via fax or mail, with patient consent.
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“As patient’s preferences for where and how they seek health care continue to evolve, St. Luke’s will continue to identify opportunities to ensure that high-quality, cost-effective care is well coordinated, regardless of where it is delivered”, St. Luke’s said.
