Merative
Merative L.P., formerly IBM Watson Health, is an American medical technology company that provides products and services that help clients facilitate medical research, clinical research, real world evidence, and healthcare services through the use of artificial intelligence, data analytics, cloud computing, and other advanced information technology. Merative is owned by Francisco Partners, an American private equity firm headquartered in San Francisco, California. In 2022, IBM divested and spun-off their Watson Health division into Merative., it remains a standalone company headquartered in Ann Arbor with innovation centers in Ireland, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai.
History
Thomson Healthcare was a division of Thomson Corporation until 2008, when, following Thomson's merger with Reuters, it became the healthcare unit of Thomson Reuters. On April 23, 2012, Thomson Reuters agreed to sell it to Veritas Capital for US$1.25 billion. On June 6, 2012, the sale was finalized and the new company, Truven Health Analytics, became an independent organization solely focused on healthcare.IBM Corporation acquired Truven Health Analytics on February 18, 2016, and merged it with IBM's Watson Health unit. Truven Health Analytics provided comprehensive healthcare data and analytics services. The company name Truven is a portmanteau of the words "trusted" and "proven".
In January 2022, IBM announced the sale of part of the Watson Health assets, including Truven to Francisco Partners for a reported $1 billion. On June 30, 2022, Francisco Partners announced the completion of acquiring Watson Health and launched a healthcare data company named Merative.
Advancements
Watson's natural language, hypothesis generation, and evidence-based learning capabilities are being investigated to see how Watson may contribute to clinical decision support systems, and the increase in artificial intelligence in healthcare for use by medical professionals. To aid physicians in the treatment of their patients, once a physician has posed a query to the system describing symptoms and other related factors, Watson first parses the input to identify the most important pieces of information; then mines patient data to find facts relevant to the patient's medical and hereditary history; then examines available data sources to form and test hypotheses; and finally provides a list of individualized, confidence-scored recommendations. The sources of data that Watson uses for analysis can include treatment guidelines, electronic medical record data, notes from healthcare providers, research materials, clinical studies, journal articles and patient information. Despite being developed and marketed as a "diagnosis and treatment advisor", Watson has never been actually involved in the medical diagnosis process, only in assisting with identifying treatment options for patients who have already been diagnosed.In February 2011, it was announced that IBM would be partnering with Nuance Communications for a research project to develop a commercial product during the next 18 to 24 months, designed to exploit Watson's clinical decision support capabilities. Physicians at Columbia University would help to identify critical issues in the practice of medicine, where the system's technology may be able to contribute. And also, physicians at the University of Maryland would work to identify the best way that a technology like Watson could interact with medical practitioners to provide the maximum assistance.
In September 2011, IBM and WellPoint announced a partnership to utilize Watson's data crunching capability to help suggest treatment options to physicians. Then, in February 2013, IBM and WellPoint gave Watson its first commercial application, for utilization management decisions in lung cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center.
IBM announced a partnership with Cleveland Clinic in October 2012. The company has sent Watson to the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, where it will increase its health expertise and assist medical professionals in treating patients. The medical facility will utilize Watson's ability to store and process large quantities of information to help speed up and increase the accuracy of the treatment process. "Cleveland Clinic's collaboration with IBM is exciting because it offers us the opportunity to teach Watson to 'think' in ways that have the potential to make it a powerful tool in medicine", said C. Martin Harris, MD, chief information officer of Cleveland Clinic.
In 2013, IBM and MD Anderson Cancer Center began a pilot program to further the center's "mission to eradicate cancer". However, after spending $62 million, the project did not meet its goals and it has been stopped.
On February 8, 2013, IBM announced that oncologists at the Maine Center for Cancer Medicine and Westmed Medical Group in New York have started to test the Watson supercomputer system in an effort to recommend treatment for lung cancer.
On July 29, 2016, IBM and Manipal Hospitals announced the launch of IBM Watson for Oncology, for cancer patients. This product provides information and insights to physicians and cancer patients to help them identify personalized, evidence-based cancer care options. Manipal Hospitals is the second hospital in the world to adopt this technology and first in the world to offer it to patients online as an expert second opinion through their website. Manipal discontinued this contract in December 2018.
On January 7, 2017, IBM and Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance entered into a contract for IBM to deliver analysis to compensation payouts via its IBM Watson Explorer AI, this resulted in the loss of 34 jobs and the company said it would speed up compensation payout analysis via analysing claims and medical record and increase productivity by 30%. The company also said it would save ¥140m in running costs.
It is said that IBM Watson will carry the knowledge-base of 1000 cancer specialists, which will bring a revolution in the field of healthcare. IBM is regarded as a disruptive innovation. However, the stream of oncology is still in its nascent stage.
Several startups in the healthcare space have been effectively using seven business model archetypes to take solutions based on IBM Watson to the marketplace. These archetypes depends on the value generated for the target user and value capturing mechanisms.
In 2019, Eliza Strickland calls "the Watson Health story a cautionary tale of hubris and hype" and provides a "representative sample of projects" with their status. A 2021 post from the Association for Computing Machinery titled "What Happened To Watson Health?" described the portfolio management challenges of Watson Health given the number of acquisitions involved in the division creation in 2015, and its near-total emphasis on the "Blue Washing" process over acquisition customer-base needs. A 2025 book "The Rise and Fall of Explorys and IBM Watson Health" described these events in further detail.
On January 21, 2022, IBM announced that it would sell Watson Health to the private equity firm of Francisco Partners.
Industry considerations and challenges
The subsequent motive of large based health companies merging with other health companies, allows for greater health data accessibility. Greater health data may allow for more implementation of AI algorithms.A large part of industry focus of implementation of AI in the healthcare sector is in the clinical decision support systems. As the amount of data increases, AI decision support systems become more efficient. Numerous companies are exploring the possibilities of the incorporation of big data in the health care industry.
IBM's Watson Oncology is in development at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cleveland Clinic. IBM is also working with CVS Health on AI applications in chronic disease treatment and with Johnson & Johnson on analysis of scientific papers to find new connections for drug development. In May 2017, IBM and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute began a joint project entitled Health Empowerment by Analytics, Learning and Semantics, to be explored using AI technology to enhance healthcare.
Some other large companies that have contributed to AI algorithms for use in healthcare include:
Microsoft
's Hanover project, in partnership with Oregon Health & Science University's Knight Cancer Institute, analyzes medical research to predict the most effective cancer drug treatment options for patients. Other projects include medical image analysis of tumor progression and the development of programmable cells.Intel
Intel's venture capital arm recently invested in startup Lumiata, which uses AI to identify at-risk patients and develop care options.Artificial intelligence in healthcare is the use of complex algorithms and software to emulate human cognition in the analysis of complicated medical data. Specifically, AI is the ability for computer algorithms to approximate conclusions without direct human input.
What distinguishes AI technology from traditional technologies in health care is the ability to gain information, process it and give a well-defined output to the end-user. AI does this through machine learning algorithms. These algorithms can recognize patterns in behavior and create its own logic. In order to reduce the margin of error, AI algorithms need to be tested repeatedly. AI algorithms behave differently from humans in two ways: algorithms are literal: if you set a goal, the algorithm can't adjust itself and only understand what it has been told explicitly, and algorithms are black boxes; algorithms can predict extremely precise, but not the cause or the why.
The primary aim of health-related AI applications is to analyze relationships between prevention or treatment techniques and patient outcomes. AI programs have been developed and applied to practices such as diagnosis processes, treatment protocol development, drug development, personalized medicine, and patient monitoring and care. Medical institutions such as The Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and National Health Service, have developed AI algorithms for their departments. Large technology companies such as IBM and Google, and startups such as Welltok and Ayasdi, have also developed AI algorithms for healthcare. Additionally, hospitals are looking to AI solutions to support operational initiatives that increase cost saving, improve patient satisfaction, and satisfy their staffing and workforce needs. Companies are developing predictive analytics solutions that help healthcare managers improve business operations through increasing utilization, decreasing patient boarding, reducing length of stay and optimizing staffing levels.
The following medical fields are of interest in artificial intelligence research: