To dramatically advance the quality and effectiveness of personal healthcare, IBM is establishing a Watson Health Cloud that will provide a secure and open platform for physicians, researchers, insurers and companies focused on health and wellness solutions. The HIPAA-enabled Watson Health Cloud will enable secure access to individualized insights and a more complete picture of the many factors that can affect people's health.

Extending the company's exclusive Watson cognitive computing platform, IBM is Entering new partnerships with leading companies including Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to help optimize consumer and medical devices for data collection, analysis and feedback. It is also acquiring Explorys and Phytel to advance its healthcare analytics capabilities. And also, establishing a dedicated business unit - IBM Watson Health, to be headquartered in the Boston, MA, area.

"All this data can be overwhelming for providers and patients alike, but it also presents an unprecedented opportunity to transform the ways in which we manage our health," said Mr John E Kelly III, IBM senior vice-president, solutions portfolio and research. He added, "We need better ways to tap into and analyze all of this information in real-time to benefit patients and to improve wellness globally. Only IBM has the advanced cognitive capabilities of Watson and can pull together the vast ecosystem of partners, practitioners and researchers needed to drive change, as well as to provide the open, secure and scalable platform needed to make it all possible."

IBM is collaborating with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to create new health-based offerings that leverage information collected from personal health, medical and fitness devices. The results will be better insights, real-time feedback and recommendations to improve everything from personal health and wellness to acute and chronic care. These relationships are non-exclusive, and IBM anticipates many more companies to leverage the Watson Health Cloud platform.

IBM and Apple will expand their partnership with IBM Watson Health Cloud to provide a secure cloud platform and analytics for Apple's HealthKit and ResearchKit. This will support health data entered by customers in iOS apps and also arm medical researchers with a secure, open data storage solution with access to IBM's most sophisticated data analytics capabilities

Johnson & Johnson will help create intelligent coaching systems centered on preoperative and postoperative patient care, including joint replacement and spinal surgery. Solutions will be mobile-based, accessing the Watson Health Cloud and leveraging IBM Watson's cognitive capabilities. It will also look to launch new health apps targeting chronic conditions, which currently cost consumers as much as 80 percent of the $7 trillion global healthcare spend. Medtronic will leverage the Watson Health Cloud insights platform to deliver new highly-personalized care management solutions for people with diabetes. The solutions will receive and analyze patient information and data from various Medtronic devices including insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors, and use this information to provide dynamic, personalized diabetes management strategies to patients and their providers.

To complement its existing capabilities, IBM has reached an agreement to acquire Cleveland-based Explorys and Dallas-based Phytel, two healthcare technology companies that are widely recognized for their leadership in applying Big Data and analytics to help improve the quality of health for individuals and large population groups.

The acquisitions bolster IBM's efforts to apply advanced analytics and cognitive computing to help primary care providers, large hospital systems and physician networks improve healthcare quality and effect healthier patient outcomes.