A leading US pharmacy services provider and IT company have announced their collaboration to facilitate the provision of truly patient-centred primary care.
CVS Health (a US pharmacy innovation company with around 7,800 retail outlets and 1,000 walk-in medical clinics) and IBM (a globally integrated technology and consulting company working across 170 countries) will work together to use Watson cognitive computing to collate and interpret a vast array of health information on a patient-by-patient basis to provide a truly personalized healthcare service. The collaboration is intended to promote healthy living and empower healthcare services to provide tailored, all-round care for patients with chronic disease.
Watson (developed by IBM) is the first commercially available cognitive computing capability. It can analyse high volumes of data and process it in a human-like manner. Watson can understand natural language, use the evidence it collates to generate hypotheses, and modify these hypotheses according to changing circumstances. Watson will receive healthcare information from a diverse array of sources, including medical health records, pharmacy and medical claims information, environmental factors, lifestyle questionnaires, and self-quantification devices.
This represents a healthcare management system that is far advanced from those currently available and will allow all healthcare providers involved in a patient's care to have access to the full picture, facilitating a co-ordinated and truly personalized approach. The information will be quickly available and easy to access so a patient can be continually monitored and encouraged to maintain care regimens, and thereby achieve their health goals. In this way, the new system can be used to address all aspects of a patient's health from good lifestyle choices to the management of chronic conditions, such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
Chief Medical Officer for CVS Health, Dr Troyen Brennan, commented "CVS Health and IBM are both committed to improving health and finding ways to engage individuals in their well-being through the use of information and technology...This partnership will enable us to leverage advanced technologies and key health information to develop a tool that can be applied by a variety of health care providers".
Senior vice president of IBM Watson, Mike Rhodin, emphasised:
The capabilities of the IBM Watson Health Cloud, when coupled with CVS Health's insights into medication utilization and patient behaviour, could prove transformative for the industry...Improving care for people with chronic conditions supports IBM's commitment to make big plays that advance the health and well-being of the global community".
The CVS Health/IBM Watson collaboration will focus on predicting individuals who may benefit from proactive, personalised programmes to reduce health risk; encouraging patients to adhere to prescribed medicines and adopt healthy lifestyle regimens; suggesting appropriate use of cost-effective primary care and out-patient providers.
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