The data and images obtained from Merge Healthcare’s medical imaging management platform will be integrated with Watson’s cloud-based healthcare computing system. They’ll get paid $7.13 per share, which is a premium of 31.8 percent of the share’s price at the close of Wednesday. (NYSE:IBM) expects the acquisition to bolster its strategy of adding rich analytics with deep learning to the Watson Health Platform. The purchase of Merge Healthcare, a medical-imaging software company, will give IBM new technology that it will be able to integrate with Watson.
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IBM’s Watson Health unit plans to bring together Merge’s product and solution offerings with existing expertise in cognitive computing, population health, and cloud-based healthcare intelligence offerings. So, for example, a radiologist might examine thousands of patient images a day, but is looking only for abnormalities on the images themselves rather than also taking into account a person’s medical history, treatments and drug regimens.
“As Watson evolves, we are tackling more complex and meaningful problems by constantly evaluating bigger and more challenging data sets”, IBM vice president John Kelly said.
In essence, Watson’s vision will be used to analyze and cross-reference countless medical images against genomic tests, lab results, clinical studies, electronic health records, and other data sources.
IBM Research estimates that about 90% of all data stored by hospitals and other healthcare institutions is imaging data.
The acquisition will hold strong significance, specially for IBM’s Watson health platform, a part of IBM’s larger Watson Analytics Suite.
Merge Healthcare Inc. was founded in 1987 and has, since then, built a reputation in the medical field for its ability to transform legacy or film-based images into modern or filmless digitized images which they distribute and interpret diagnostically. Initially it employed the natural capability in language processing in the high profile demo project and beat human champions in the game of questions and answers.
According to Fortune, IBM’s cognitive computer, Watson, has become the company’s primary focal point in its efforts to show that it is still at the forefront of technology innovation.
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Analysts consider IBM’s acquisition to be fair and do not expect any competitive bids. IBM said it anticipates closing the transaction later this year. Watson Health is attempting to marshal huge amounts of scrambled and aggregated patient data in the service of providing individualized health care that might improve outcomes and cut costs.
