IBM announced Monday it had completed the acquisition of Dallas-based population health company Phytel. Phytel provides integrated population health management software, and many analysts consider it a leader in the sector. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
IBM announced its intent to acquire Phytel at HIMSS15, where it also announced it would acquire Cleveland Clinic spinoff Explorys and build a new business unit focused on Watson, IBM's supercomputer star. The Watson Health unit will encompass both Phytel and Explorys, which claims one of the largest clinical data sets in the world, representing more than 50 million lives.
[See also: KLAS gives Phytel top score for population health.]
Phytel develops and sells cloud-based services aimed at improving long term health outcomes by helping healthcare providers and care teams coordinate care and engage patients to improve influence population health. As IBM executives see it, Phytel also enables providers to meet the new healthcare quality requirements and reimbursement models by delivering quality care to patients based on evidence of what works best.
"The acquisition of Phytel supports our goal to advance the quality and effectiveness of personal healthcare by enabling secure access to individualized insights and a more complete picture of the many factors that can affect people's health," said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson, in a news release.
The acquisition bolsters IBM's efforts to apply advanced analytics and cognitive computing to help primary care providers, large hospital systems and physician networks improve healthcare quality, Rhodin said.
[See also: With 2 acquisitions, IBM builds out Watson Health.]
As IBM officials describe it, the software works with healthcare providers' current electronic health record technology to reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions and automates population health management, to help improve patient outreach and engagement. Because it is cloud-based, providers are not constrained with technology issues and can focus on outcomes. The software has delivered proven results for Phytel clients while improving patient care using a rapid deployment methodology.
