IBM announced a range of new cognitive computing technologies this year at HIMSS, the annual health IT conference hosted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
Here are three of the company's new services.
• IBM Watson Health Value-Based Care. The company is working to create a new series of value-based cloud solutions. These solutions will use patient-level data to predict future needs and behaviors at the individual, group and population levels. The first applications in this set, to be rolled out later this year, will include provider performance management, bundled payments forecasts and other analytics solutions.
• Watson Health Consulting Services. This unit — which includes consultants specializing in analytics, machine learning, population health and user experience, among other topics — is meant to help healthcare and life science clients bring cognitive solutions into their organizations. The consultants will aid clients in processes like identifying uses for cognitive technology and assisting with implementation.
• IBM Watson Imaging Clinical Review. The company also introduced Watson Health's first cognitive imaging service, which helps providers identify critical patient cases. The tool uses cognitive text analytics to review medical reports, which it combines with other data sources to verify key data. IBM Watson Imaging Clinical Review's first application is for aortic stenosis, a common cardiovascular condition.