Health IT, Startups

6 digital health companies reimagine their healthcare apps with help from Watson

An innovation throwdown by IBM asked companies to devise mobile applications tapping Watson’s cognitive computing […]

An innovation throwdown by IBM asked companies to devise mobile applications tapping Watson’s cognitive computing technology. After the finalists submit prototypes for judging, only five teams will present proposals to IBM. The three winners are awarded 90 days of access to the Watson APIs and consulting from IBM Interactive design services.
Of the 25 businesses listed as finalists, about one quarter are digital health companies. Here’s what they came up with:

Sense.ly has been developing ways to apply telemedicine to behavioral health, using avatars. It is using Watson to narrow diagnoses based on symptoms entered by users of its app. It would also factor pharmacy interactions, medical history, lab tests, biometrics and insurance information. The app is intended to drive members to its telemedicine network of physicians who would use Watson’s information to arrive at a diagnosis more quickly and prescribe a treatment plan. “Depending on Watson’s feedback, we can quickly drive the member to the most appropriate mode of care, from low acuity to high acuity. If the patient cannot be seen by a telemedicine physician, we harness Watson’s power to direct them depending on insurance information and specialty needed.”

Biovideo: The health IT company plans to use Watson to supersize its reference tool, Baby 101, to help parents when their infant is sick or improve their knowledge of early child development.

Ringful Health would use Watson as an aggregation tool to help tailor patient recommendations on screening tests. The idea is that the responses generated with Watson’s technology would make patient conversations with their physicians more meaningful and efficient. On a broader scale, the company believes its Better Screening tool could reduce waste associated with overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

Ultramatics wants to enlist Watson for its mobile health app to provide personalized answers to health questions. The app is designed to increase user confidence that they have the most appropriate plan for their specific healthcare needs.

GenieMD and GoGo Health also were among the finalists but they didn’t include descriptions of how they were using Watson’s technology.

[Photo from Flickr user philcampbell]

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