IBM and Siemens Healthineers Forge Five-Year Global Strategic Partnership to Expand Watson's Role in Healthcare
Recently, IBM and Siemens Healthineers signed a “Five-Year Global Strategic Cooperation Plan” for PHM (Patient Health Management) solutions. The initiative aims to leverage IBM Watson to provide hospitals, patients with chronic diseases and cancer, and health systems with valuable medical services and more effective disease diagnosis.
In the global healthcare and wellness sector, IBM Watson has been a major focal point. In addition to collaborating with several large cancer hospitals, Watson has developed intelligent predictive solutions for clinical oncology treatment and assisted pharmaceutical researchers in screening new drug compounds; however, it has yet to demonstrate broadly applicable use cases.
Watson’s true entry into the healthcare sector dates back to August 2011. Currently, in the field of oncology treatment, Watson has incorporated 42 medical journals from oncology research, over 600,000 pieces of medical evidence from clinical trials, and 2 million pages of textual data. Within seconds, Watson can sift through 1.5 million patient records spanning decades of cancer treatment history—including medical records and patient outcomes—and provide physicians with evidence-based treatment options for consideration. However, whether considering future market pricing or technical maintenance and operations, these factors merely indicate that Watson is best suited as a research support tool. The current development of PHM (Patient Health Management) solutions marks IBM Watson’s expansion from specialized intelligent assistance functions—such as oncology treatment planning and candidate drug compound screening—toward deeper applications in the broader field of population health.
Healthcare industry analyst Koustav Chatterjee stated, “The adoption of Population Health Management (PHM) solutions is expected to accelerate rapidly. Patient care is entering a new era, in which previously manual services are transitioning toward intelligent automation through PHM solutions. Meanwhile, the integration of formerly siloed information, deeper analysis of patient multimorbidity, and enhanced patient engagement will collectively drive healthcare systems to expedite the widespread adoption of PHM technologies and their service solutions, thereby helping healthcare providers efficiently manage chronic and other underlying diseases.”
Currently, the application of Siemens’ medical devices and clinical diagnostic technologies in healthcare institutions accounts for approximately 70% of the “critical decision-making” processes in hospital medical services. This significantly influences development trends in the healthcare and broader health sectors, as well as the research and development and market adoption of next-generation Siemens medical devices.
In any large or moderately modern hospital, approximately 70% of medical services and clinical testing technologies rely on Siemens’ medical equipment and technical support. These already advanced medical devices and decision-support solutions will undergo an iterative evolution from quantitative accumulation to qualitative transformation in the future, driven by the intelligent decision-making capabilities of the IBM Watson supercomputer. For example, Siemens healthcare providers can access IBM Watson Care Manager, a new solution from IBM that integrates diverse types of clinical data and applies cognitive analytics to provide solutions for nurses and related care management personnel, enabling them to closely monitor patients with chronic diseases.
Under the “Five-Year Global Strategic Development Plan,” Siemens Healthineers will leverage its global medical device sales network and channels to launch technology-driven innovations and provide consulting services to suppliers, supporting their transition toward value-based healthcare delivery.
Matthias Platsch, Executive at Siemens Healthineers, stated, “By leveraging our professional expertise and global sales network and channels, we will join forces with IBM to effectively help suppliers transition toward delivering valuable healthcare services to patients, make significant inroads into the commercial applications within the global healthcare and wellness sectors, and play a pivotal role in future value-based healthcare.”
Siemens and IBM have joined forces, enabling Watson to rapidly integrate into the entire process of hospital management decision-making, medical services, and assisted diagnosis through Siemens’ extensive hospital network. It is foreseeable that all future Siemens CT or MRI equipment will come pre-installed with IBM Watson’s intelligent system—an artificial intelligence decision-making mechanism. This system will not only collect big data but also continuously self-learn and refine its assisted diagnostic capabilities for clinical imaging. Furthermore, data from Siemens’ hospital information systems—covering medical management and daily operational workflows such as operating room management, pharmacy operations, and patient admission/discharge processes—will also serve as “metadata” for Watson.
It is reported that IBM and Siemens Healthineers will also conduct new initiatives on the PHM product,Co-development, deployment, andResource integration, such as incorporating Phytel and Explorys, two startups acquired by IBM in 2015, into its development strategy. Explorys is a cloud services provider that integrates multiple types of data to support business decision-making and predictive analytics. Meanwhile, Phytel offers cloud-based software capable of processing various types of health data to provide analytical insights for physicians. Additionally, Phytel sells its software to help healthcare professionals manage patient information.