IBM’s Watson supercomputer pairs with CVS in hopes of short-circiuiting illnesses

Pharmacists are trained to identify potentially harmful drug interactions, but they can’t really help prevent illnesses from developing in the first place. A new partnership between IBM and CVS, however, might change that.

Using the power of IBM’s Watson supercomputer, CVS wants to provide doctors and patients with data that would ideally be used to catch conditions before they developed into something serious, from hypertension and heart disease to diabetes and obesity.

“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,” Troyen Brennan, chief medical officer for CVS Health, said in a statement.

The idea, according to IBM’s chief health officer, Kyu Rhee, is to predict, prevent, and personalize.

“To predict, we will apply Watson’s cognitive computing to a wide range of data from electronic medical records, pharmacy records, wearables, fitness devices, home monitoring devices, consumer-oriented mobile apps, and more,” Rhee said.

Ideally, this would allow healthcare professionals to prevent hospitalizations and unnecessary emergency room visits. With Watson’s computational power, meanwhile, CVS pharmacists and healthcare providers would have more personalized data, which they’d use to “nudge patients towards their best possible health,” Rhee said.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: CVS, IBM’s Watson Want to Prevent You From Getting Sick

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