Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
IBM Takes Steps To Expand Watson's Reach, Health Care Capabilities
The Associated Press: IBM Makes $1B Buy To Boost Watson's Health Care Capabilities
IBM says it will pay $1 billion to acquire medical imaging and software company Merge Healthcare, part of an effort to boost the health care capabilities of Watson, its cognitive computing system. Merge's technology is used by 7,500 hospitals and doctor's offices to sort medical images and scans, as well as researchers and pharmaceutical companies. IBM said Thursday it hopes to combine the company's technology with its Watson system to help customers sort and analyze images, medical scans, lab results and other electronic health records. (8/8)
California Healthline: IBM Hopes CVS-Watson Partnership Leads To More Connections In Cloud
With a store in "almost every neighborhood" in the country, CVS pharmacies seemed the perfect match for Watson Health, IBM's big-data-crunching artificial intelligence system, officials from both companies said after the new partnership was announced last week. (Lauer, 8/6)
