American healthcare company CVS Health announced that it will partner with IBM in providing patients suffering from chronic diseases with improved services for health care management.
The new agreement will allow pharmacists and practitioners from CVS Health to benefit from the state-of-the-art computing capabilities of IBM's premiere supercomputer Watson in analyzing massive amounts of data and interpreting and evaluating information.
The health care company looks to IBM's Watson to help its employees to access large quantities of patient health records, information on pharmacy and other resources in order to improve work with primary care physicians and patient guidance.
Chief medical officer Troyen Brennan of CVS Health said that the new technology from IBM will provide them with better access to medical research than what the company has at the moment. He explained that it will serve as a new tool for the prevention of diseases.
The primary focus of the partnership between CVS Health and IBM is to improve services for people diagnosed with chronic diseases, such as obesity, heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. It centers on the use of IBM Watson Health, the company's business unit that is designed to help medical professionals and researchers in using data and technology gathered by the Watson computer for the purpose of improving health care.
IBM Watson Health vice president and chief science officer Shahram Ebadollahi said that their main goal is to improve outcomes, reduce costs and provide a generally better experience for patients.
The agreement also makes use of IBM's Watson Health Cloud system, which collects information on different fields, such as medical history, nutrition, lifestyle and other potential factors, to create a more accurate and personalized view of health. The software company has already teamed up with other industry leaders, including Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson and Apple to provide better access to these kinds of data.
This new deal is not the first time CVS Health has teamed up with IBM in improving their health care services. The two companies entered a partnership in 2014, wherein they launched the Technology Solutions for Smarter Health grant program, which is designed to support the use of advanced technology in health centers. The grant for the program was valued at $1.5 million.
The CVS will begin its use of the new IBM Watson technology in 2016.
Photo: Greg Gorman | Flickr
