ARMONK,
N.Y. and CHICAGO,
Oct. 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM
(NYSE: IBM) today announced that it has completed the acquisition
of Merge Healthcare Incorporated, a leading provider of medical
image handling and processing, interoperability and clinical
systems. Under terms of the $1
billion transaction, Merge shareholders will receive
$7.13 per share in cash.
Merge's technology platforms are used at more than 7,500 U.S.
healthcare sites, as well as many of the world's leading clinical
research institutes and pharmaceutical firms to manage a growing
body of medical images. It is anticipated that these organizations
will look to use the Watson Health Cloud to surface new insights
from a consolidated, patient-centric view of current and historical
images, electronic health records, consumer contributed data from
wearable devices and other related medical data, in a HIPAA-enabled
cloud environment. These insights can help clinicians to
efficiently identify options for the diagnosis, treatment and
monitoring of a broad array of health conditions such as cancer,
stroke and heart disease.
Merge will become part of IBM's new Watson Health business unit,
bolstering IBM clients' ability to analyze and cross-reference
medical images against 315 billion data points already in the
Watson Health Cloud, including lab results, electronic health
records, genomic tests, clinical studies and other health-related
data sources. Merge's clients could compare new medical images with
a patient's medical history as well as populations of similar
patients to detect changes and anomalies. Insights generated by
Watson could then help healthcare
providers and researchers to pursue more personalized approaches to
diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of patients.
About IBM Watson Health
Watson is the first commercially available
cognitive computing capability representing a new era in computing.
The system, delivered through the cloud, analyzes high volumes of
data, and complex questions posed in natural language, and proposes
evidence-based options. Watson
continuously learns, gaining in value and knowledge over time, from
previous interactions. In April 2015,
the company launched IBM Watson Health and the Watson Health Cloud
platform. The new unit will help improve the ability of doctors,
researchers and insurers to innovate by surfacing new insights from
the massive amount of personal health data being created daily. The
Watson Health Cloud allows this information to be de-identified,
shared and combined with a dynamic and constantly growing
aggregated view of clinical, research and social health data.
About IBM
For more information on IBM Watson, visit:
ibm.com/watson. For more information on IBM Watson Health,
visit: ibm.com/watsonhealth
Check out the IBM Watson press kit at:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/27297.wss
Join the conversation at #ibmwatson and
#watsonhealth. Follow Watson on Facebook and see
Watson on YouTube and
Flickr.
Learn more about this story at:
http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2015/08/seeing-believing-bringing-cognitive-image-analytics-healthcare.html
and https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/47435.wss
Media Contact
Christine Douglass
IBM Media Relations
415-535-4479 (mobile)
cgdouglass@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM