IBM Watson came of age in healthcare just five months ago at HIMSS15 with two acquisitions and the creation of Watson Health. Now, Watson Health has a home and a couple of new offerings that up the competition level in a rapidly evolving market.
Thursday, Big Blue is opening Watson Health’s global headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and introducing IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance and IBM Watson Care Manager. This comes barely a week after Salesforce debuted a data aggregator called Salesforce Health Cloud.
More than 700 employees will be based at the Kendall Square location in Cambridge. IBM said that the company has upwards of 2,000 people worldwide working on Watson Health.
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While Watson is more artificial intelligence than aggregator, there seems to be some overlap with Salesforce Health Cloud, as well as with precision medicine companies Persevia and NantHealth.
IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance is intended to help biomedical companies manage development of innovations, including by protecting access to and sharing of regulated data. Care Manager is focused on population health management, taking advantage of IBM’s partnership with Apple to integrate functions from ResearchKit and HealthKit.
Partners for the rollout of these two new Watson Health Services include Boston Children’s Hospital, Columbia University, Sage Bionetworks and Teva Pharmaceuticals. According to IBM, Sage and Teva have chosen the Watson Health Cloud as their “preferred development platform.”
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