Cleveland Clinic and IBM Sign 5-Year Agreement

CLEVELAND, OH - The Cleveland Clinic and IBM announced on Thursday a five-year agreement that will expand the Clinic's health information technology. The two companies have worked together for decades, so this agreement will deepen the collaboration between the two.

In a statement, IBM says the Clinic will make greater use of IBM's secured cloud, social, mobile and Watson cognitive computing technologies. The use of this technology, the Clinic is hoping, will benefit patients by revealing cost-cutting areas that were obscured in data before. Specifically the Clinic is hoping that the partnership will help ease the transition to a value-based care model and reveal standards for providers across the United States.

"This initiative with IBM is mutually beneficial and will significantly advance our IT capabilities, which are increasingly important to provide the best care to patients as healthcare becomes more and more technology dependent,”said Toby Cosgrove, M.D., CEO and president of Cleveland Clinic, in a statement. “With the explosion of data in healthcare, the technology solutions we will develop and implement together could transform our ability to deliver quality, evidence-based care and better respond to the needs of our patients, caregivers and partners.”

Healthcare in the United States has been impacted by the development and implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), an area that a collaboration with a tech company like IBM could have obvious positive impacts for the Clinic. For example, now that more medical information is being stored digitally, patient data can be more easily analyzed via a cognitive device like Watson (an AI system). An analysis from Watson may provide the Clinic with a high-quality, low-cost recommendation for patient care. That recommendation could then be discussed among doctors.

“For the past five years, Cleveland Clinic has been central to IBM’s effort to build Watson’s cognitive capabilities in healthcare," said Deborah DiSanzo, general manager of IBM Watson Health. "Together, we will bring cognitive computing and an entire portfolio of IBM technology offerings to transform clinical care and administrative operations across the Cleveland Clinic, and help its renowned care providers deliver evidence-based, personalized and cognitive care to the individual patients they serve and the populations they manage.”

IBM provided this timeline history of the Clinic's collaboration with Watson:

• 2011: Watson wins Jeopardy!, inspiring IBM and Cleveland Clinic to join forces to train Watson to “think” like a doctor.
• 2013: IBM Research initiates a collaboration with Clinic faculty, physicians and students to develop a Watson EMR assistant to help physicians quickly summarize and cull relevant insights from EMRs.
• 2014: Watson begins aiding the Clinic's research into new cancer treatments based on a patient's genetic makeup. Watson still helps the Clinic in this way.
• 2014: It is announced that Watson will become a vital part of a new $515 million Health Education Campus opening in 2019. The Clinic and Case Western Reserve University say that IBM Watson will play a significant role as a tool to help students analyze symptoms based on evidence-based insights rather than rote memorization.
• 2015: IBM acquires Explorys, a healthcare intelligence cloud company that has built one of the largest secured clinical data sets in the world. Explorys was developed by Cleveland Clinic physicians and IT experts before becoming a “spin-off”company in 2009.

“IBM believes this technology and innovation partnership with Cleveland Clinic will result in transformational information technology strategies enabling both the Cleveland Clinic and IBM to respond to disruptive changes occurring throughout the healthcare industry,” said Philip Guido, general manager, North America, IBM Services.

Photo from IBM