Merge Healthcare has made a name for itself providing medical image handling and processing, interoperability and clinical systems that work to advance healthcare quality and efficiency.
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IBM is looking to use the image analytic and cognitive capabilities of Watson by merging it with the Merge Healthcare medical imaging platform.
Under terms of the deal, expected to close later this year, Merge shareholders would receive $7.13 per share in cash. (NYSE:IBM) expects the acquisition to bolster its strategy of adding rich analytics with deep learning to the Watson Health Platform.
Overall, the combination could better equip providers in radiology, cardiology, orthopedics and ophthalmology to deliver more personalized approaches to the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of patients, it added.
But the purchase of Merge Healthcare is both a sizable investment and an additional resource for IBM’s new Watson health unit. This could be vital to medical professionals like radiologists in emergency rooms, IBM said, who collectively grapple with as many as 100,000 images per day. The system named after first CEO of the company Thomas J Watson was developed as part of its DeepQA project.
For Big Blue, the acquisition highlights how healthcare is the most important industry for commercializing Watson.
According to IBM, medical images are a large and fast-growing source of information, accounting for something like 90% of all medical data out there. “That’s the real promise of cognitive computing and its artificial intelligence components – helping to make us healthier and to improve the quality of our lives”.
“The IBM-Merge technologies could be used to compare a patient’s current images with past records, and to analyze anonymized records to develop insights into specific maladies and conditions”, King said. In a more recent report, IBM presented its experimentation in getting Watson to comprehend pictures and videos.
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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. The goal is to bring enhanced imaging capabilities to the Watson Health portfolio, essentially giving the supercomputer the ability to see. The idea is to combine all the data of Watson and Merge by IBM. IBM’s concept is that by using the Watson engine to link the image to other information, such as the electronic health record of a patient, more subtle abnormalities may be detected. IBM said it anticipates closing the transaction later this year.
