Siemens Healthineers, IBM Watson to Tackle Population Health Management

IBM and Siemens Healthineers recently 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 health care 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 health care payment models, and the digitization and consumerization of health care.

"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," says Koustav Chatterjee, Frost & Sullivan Transformational Health Industry Analyst. "I expect the shift from volume to value-based health care 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 health care 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 health care 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," says 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 health care 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 health care."

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 health care. 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," says 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 health care in the US and globally."

Source: Siemens Healthineers