IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the launch of its Health Analytics Solution Center, part of a network of global centers addressing the growing demand for advanced analytics needed to help hospitals and medical staff improve decision-making and provide higher quality care.
The center will be hosted in the IBM Global Solution Center in Dallas and will employ more than 100 health analytics experts, technical architects and specialists, with access to hundreds more health industry experts from across IBM, including experts from IBM's Business Analytics and Optimization consulting organization and IBM Research.
It is the first center of its kind to address the need for advanced analytics across the health care industry, taking advantage of increased computing power to collect and analyze data streaming in from sensors, patient monitoring systems, medical instruments and handheld devices as well as the volumes of data generated by hospitals every hour. Such data can be used to bring a new level of intelligence to health care to help doctors, nurses and medical staffs tackle complex problems such as disease management, hospital quality improvement, patient population studies and performance reporting.
Analytics can also be a powerful tool for empowering patients to make more informed decisions about their own care or lifestyle. Additionally, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers and health insurance providers can use analytics to derive new intelligence from their data to help reduce risk, predict trends and improve patient satisfaction.
"Tapping into mountains of data within hospitals and clinics can provide powerful new insight into what's working and what isn't," said Dwight Carter, CIO of the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council. "New analytics technology makes it possible to see important health trends and allow physicians and hospitals to design more effective treatments. As hospitals become more interconnected in the future, this will be an especially powerful tool for hospitals, physicians and patients alike."
Advanced analytics can help health care providers examine large volumes of data and provide deep analytics across multiple facilities, physicians and patient groups. For example, by de-identifying patient information and examining treatment plans and outcomes among thousands of diabetes patients across the region, analytics can be used to track which facilities have the most success in improving patient outcomes and identifying the unique drug combinations, modifications and care approaches that other providers should take to help make patients healthier.
This type of technology can also be used to better understand how patients use medical services and explore patterns of potentially unnecessary care and opportunities for improving patient safety or quality of care. In the IBM Health Analytics Center, a number of key innovations in health IT to help clients are available including the IBM Health Integration Framework, enterprise health analytics, health payer analytics, data integration, patient portals, remote patient monitoring, preventative care and Patient Centered Medical Home technologies.
IBM has worked with a number of leading hospitals such as Duke University Medical Center, Geisinger Health System, Mayo Clinic, New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the University of North Carolina to advance health analytics technology. The Dallas-based Health Analytics Solution Center brings together this depth of experience into one location for the first time.
"With all the dynamic changes occurring in health care and the availability of new data from more sources, deep analytics unlocks new possibilities for improving the way health care is delivered by reducing risk, saving lives and even helping reduce costs," said Rob Merkel, Global Industry Leader, Health Care, IBM Global Business Services. "This announcement is the result of more than a decade of leadership by IBM building out our expertise in advanced analytics through our services organization, software, IBM Research and a series of strategic acquisitions."
The IBM Health Analytics Center is part of business strategy recently detailed by IBM as the company expands its capabilities around business analytics. IBM is also opening six other analytics solution centers in Berlin, Beijing, Tokyo, New York City, London and Washington, D.C. As part of this initiative, IBM expects to retrain or hire as many as 4,000 new analytics consultants and professionals globally.
IBM is creating a smarter, more connected healthcare system that delivers better care with fewer mistakes, predicts and prevents diseases, and empowers people to make better choices. This includes integrating data so doctors, patients and insurers can share information seamlessly and efficiently. IBM also helps clients apply advanced analytics to improve medical research, diagnosis and treatment in order to improve patient care and help reduce healthcare costs.
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