Siemens Healthineers and IBM Watson Health Forge Global Alliance for Population Health Management

Siemens HealthineersIBM (NYSE: IBM) and Siemens Healthineers have announced a five year, global strategic alliance in Population Health Management (PHM). The alliance aims to help hospitals, health systems, integrated delivery networks, and other providers deliver value-based care to patients with complex, chronic and costly conditions such as heart disease and cancer. The health-focused alliance is the first of its kind for the companies, which have a long-standing global relationship that spans diverse industry sectors including IBMs work with Siemens Building Technologies, Siemens PLM and Siemens Digital Grid. It also marks Siemens entry into PHM.

Siemens Healthineers and IBM Watson Health intend to help healthcare professionals navigate unprecedented changes propelled by a growing volume and diversity of health data, an aging global population, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, changes in healthcare payment models, and the digitization and consumerization of healthcare.

"The adoption of PHM solutions that demonstrate meaningful use of IT applications is expected to accelerate rapidly. Patient care is moving into a broader but coordinated environment where routine, manual tasks are automated by PHM solutions that unify siloed systems, stratify comorbidities, empower patients through engagement, and benchmark outcomes at network, practice, and patient level," said Koustav Chatterjee, Frost & Sullivan Transformational Health Industry Analyst. "I expect the shift from volume to value-based healthcare delivery will accelerate adoption of PHM technology and service solutions helping providers effectively manage chronic conditions and prevent unnecessary system utilization."

The alliance leverages the expertise and global reach of both companies, including Siemens track record introducing technology-driven innovations to a broad range of providers and IBM's unique cognitive healthcare offerings. As part of the alliance, Siemens Healthineers will offer PHM solutions and services from IBM Watson Health. These offerings are designed to help meet hospital and healthcare systems' demands for value-based care analytics and reporting, and patient engagement. Siemens Healthineers will also provide consulting services to support providers in their transition to value-based care.

For example, Siemens Healthineers has access to IBM Watson Care Manager, a new cognitive solution from IBM designed to help providers and patients to work together to support individual health. IBM Watson Care Manager integrates disparate types of clinical and individual data and applies cognitive analysis to draw out insights for nurses and other care managers so they can closely monitor and counsel individuals with chronic conditions.

"Combining our strengths, Siemens Healthineers and IBM can effectively help providers transition to a value-based healthcare environment," said Matthias Platsch, head of Services at Siemens Healthineers. "We will bring the power of Siemens Healthineers' extensive relationships with providers and our deep domain expertise in clinical workflows, services, and digital health technologies to bear to help bring population health management offerings to healthcare providers. The new alliance fits perfectly into the services business of Siemens Healthineers. Thus we will enter the rapidly growing PHM market which is expected to play a significant role in end-to-end value-based healthcare."

Under the strategic alliance, it is the intent of IBM and Siemens to work together to jointly develop and deploy new PHM offerings leveraging each company's expertise and assets, including those added to the Watson Health portfolio from acquisitions such as Phytel and Explorys.

"We are at an unprecedented time in healthcare. Mature and developing markets are increasingly focused on how patient outcomes are optimized, quality is standardized among individuals and across populations, and costs are reduced," said Deborah DiSanzo, general manager for IBM Watson Health. "Siemens and IBM are ideal partners to work at the forefront of this evolution and enable personalized healthcare in the U.S. and globally."

Related news articles:

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, understands complex questions posed in natural language, and proposes evidence-based answers. 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 insights from the massive amount of personal health data being created and shared daily. The Watson Health Cloud can mask individual identities and allow this information to be shared and combined with a dynamic and constantly growing aggregated view of clinical, research and social health data.

About Siemens Healthineers
Siemens Healthineers is the separately managed healthcare business of Siemens AG and enables healthcare providers around the world to meet their current challenges and to excel in their respective environments. A leader in medical technology, Siemens Healthineers is constantly innovating its portfolio of products and services in both its core areas in imaging for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes as well as in laboratory diagnostics and molecular medicine. Siemens Healthineers is also continuously developing its digital health services and hospital management offerings, working closely with operators to develop common fields of business and to help them to not only minimize their risks, but also to exploit new opportunities. In fiscal 2015, which ended on September 30, 2015, Siemens Healthineers generated revenue of €12.9 billion and net income of over €2.1 billion and has about 45,000 employees worldwide.

Most Popular Now

Using Data and AI to Create Better Healt…

Academic medical centers could transform patient care by adopting principles from learning health systems principles, according to researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of California, San Diego. In...

AI Medical Receptionist Modernizing Doct…

A virtual medical receptionist named "Cassie," developed through research at Texas A&M University, is transforming the way patients interact with health care providers. Cassie is a digital-human assistant created by Humanate...

Northern Ireland Completes Nationwide Ro…

Go-lives at Western and Southern health and social care trusts mean every pathology service is using the same laboratory information management system; improving efficiency and quality. An ambitious technology project to...

AI Tool Set to Transform Characterisatio…

A multinational team of researchers, co-led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, has developed and tested a new AI tool to better characterise the diversity of individual cells within...

AI Detects Hidden Heart Disease Using Ex…

Mass General Brigham researchers have developed a new AI tool in collaboration with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to probe through previously collected CT scans and identify...

Human-AI Collectives Make the Most Accur…

Diagnostic errors are among the most serious problems in everyday medical practice. AI systems - especially large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT-4, Gemini, or Claude 3 - offer new ways...

MHP-Net: A Revolutionary AI Model for Ac…

Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer globally and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Accurate segmentation of liver tumors is a crucial step for the management of the...

Highland Marketing Announced as Official…

Highland Marketing has been named, for the second year running, the official communications partner for HETT Show 2025, the UK's leading digital health conference and exhibition. Taking place 7-8 October...

Groundbreaking TACIT Algorithm Offers Ne…

Researchers at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a novel algorithm that could provide a revolutionary tool for determining the best options for patients - both in the treatment...

The Many Ways that AI Enters Rheumatolog…

High-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) is the standard to diagnose and assess progression in interstitial lung disease (ILD), a key feature in systemic sclerosis (SSc). But AI-assisted interpretation has the potential...