IBM has launched a health unit to make sense of the wealth of data created by the boom in fitness trackers and apps, working with Apple, Johnson and Johnson and medical device maker Medtronic.
The move forms part of IBMs new Watson Health Cloud initiative, which will combine data from Apple platforms such as HealthKit and ResearchKit with IBM’s “cognitive computing” platform named Watson.
Medical device maker Medtronic is on board to deliver personalized care for diabetic patients and J&J will help communicate with patients, IBM said in a statement.
With the Watson Health Cloud, IBM is seeking to make sense of decades of clinical research and social data.
It could provide diagnoses or health alerts which could also be sent to doctors, carers, or insurers for example, with the user’s permission.
That could be aided by Apple’s announcement today that its ResearchKit software that helps gather health data from iPhones is now available to anyone.
It’s already been used to develop apps to study asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, says Apple.
