IBM invests $250m in healthcare initiative

IBM today announced a $250m (£132m) global initiative over three years to boost its presence in healthcare.  The money will be used for solutions development, research and development, IBM Business Partner collaborations and to hire new specialists.

Dr. Caroline Kovac, general manager of IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences said: “"The healthcare industry is under tremendous pressure to address patient safety, quality of care and cost issues. IBM is deeply committed to developing the on-demand solutions and offering the consulting expertise and business insights that can help the healthcare sector transform. Working with IBM Business Partners, we can help bring catalytic change and help the industry deliver on the promise of better patient care."”

The initiative has a strong theme of integration – marrying up IBM’s healthcare insight and consulting methodologies with deep technology skills and resources in the firm’s healthcare and life sciences division.

The announcement includes information on new contract wins and new offerings for the healthcare market from IBM. A notable gap is, however, the UK’s National Programme for IT in the NHS where IBM had been widely tipped to win the London Local Service Provider contract that went to BT.

Major wins have been achieved, however, at North Jutland in Denmark where IBM has been chosen to implement a communications system for sharing medical information and at the Austrian Social Security Institutions where a consortium of IBM, Siemens and Telekom Austria has won the technology infrastructure contract for a project to issue Austrian citizens with electronic health cards.

New product and service offerings outlined in the announcement are for:

Safe and Lean Healthcare Provider, a solution to help hospitals improve resource allocation, utilisation and planning. It also offers insights into “best practices” from other industries that can help healthcare providers prevent medical errors and improve patient care quality, while also reducing costs and streamlining operations.

Aligned Clinical Environment, a solution for hospitals and healthcare organisations to integrate, analyse and manage complex and disparate clinical, research and administrative data from multiple systems.

Centre for Healthcare Management, a resource for information and dialogue on critical issues facing healthcare payers and providers.  The new centre will sponsor discussion forums on topics ranging from disease surveillance to healthcare collaboration and data management.  It will also support the development of research reports and case studies on innovative industry approaches to improving quality and efficiency.

Clinical Transformation Practice, a practice which brings together healthcare consultants (who are also physicians, nurses or hospital administrators) with business intelligence experts to help customers transform hospitals and healthcare systems

The Information-based Medicine business unit, formed to bring greater focus to this high-growth emerging field of medicine and healthcare delivery. Information-based medicine uses IT to help doctors deliver more personalised healthcare, making available data such as genetic profiles, medical images and other research that can be integrated with clinical information to give a more complete picture of factors that may influence a patient’s medical condition.