IBM Launches Health Analytics Center

Center Helps Hospitals, Doctors and Nurses Derive New Insight to Improve Care
and Lower Costs

DALLAS, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the
launch of its Health Analytics Solution Center, part of a network of global
centers addressing the growing demand for advanced analytics needed to help
hospitals and medical staff improve decision-making and provide higher quality
care.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO )

The center will be hosted in the IBM Global Solution Center in Dallas and will
employ more than 100 health analytics experts, technical architects and
specialists, with access to hundreds more health industry experts from across
IBM, including experts from IBM's Business Analytics and Optimization
consulting organization and IBM Research.

It is the first center of its kind to address the need for advanced analytics
across the health care industry, taking advantage of increased computing power
to collect and analyze data streaming in from sensors, patient monitoring
systems, medical instruments and handheld devices as well as the volumes of
data generated by hospitals every hour. Such data can be used to bring a new
level of intelligence to health care to help doctors, nurses and medical
staffs tackle complex problems such as disease management, hospital quality
improvement, patient population studies and performance reporting.

Analytics can also be a powerful tool for empowering patients to make more
informed decisions about their own care or lifestyle. Additionally,
pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers and health insurance
providers can use analytics to derive new intelligence from their data to help
reduce risk, predict trends and improve patient satisfaction.

"Tapping into mountains of data within hospitals and clinics can provide
powerful new insight into what's working and what isn't," said Dwight Carter,
CIO of the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council. "New analytics technology makes
it possible to see important health trends and allow physicians and hospitals
to design more effective treatments. As hospitals become more interconnected
in the future, this will be an especially powerful tool for hospitals,
physicians and patients alike."

Advanced analytics can help health care providers examine large volumes of
data and provide deep analytics across multiple facilities, physicians and
patient groups. For example, by de-identifying patient information and
examining treatment plans and outcomes among thousands of diabetes patients
across the region, analytics can be used to track which facilities have the
most success in improving patient outcomes and identifying the unique drug
combinations, modifications and care approaches that other providers should
take to help make patients healthier.

This type of technology can also be used to better understand how patients use
medical services and explore patterns of potentially unnecessary care and
opportunities for improving patient safety or quality of care. In the IBM
Health Analytics Center, a number of key innovations in health IT to help
clients are available including the IBM Health Integration Framework,
enterprise health analytics, health payer analytics, data integration, patient
portals, remote patient monitoring, preventative care and Patient Centered
Medical Home technologies.

IBM has worked with a number of leading hospitals such as Duke University
Medical Center, Geisinger Health System, Mayo Clinic, New York's Memorial
Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the University of North Carolina to advance
health analytics technology. The Dallas-based Health Analytics Solution
Center brings together this depth of experience into one location for the
first time.

"With all the dynamic changes occurring in health care and the availability of
new data from more sources, deep analytics unlocks new possibilities for
improving the way health care is delivered by reducing risk, saving lives and
even helping reduce costs," said Rob Merkel, Global Industry Leader, Health
Care, IBM Global Business Services. "This announcement is the result of more
than a decade of leadership by IBM building out our expertise in advanced
analytics through our services organization, software, IBM Research and a
series of strategic acquisitions."

The IBM Health Analytics Center is part of business strategy recently detailed
by IBM as the company expands its capabilities around business analytics. IBM
is also opening six other analytics solution centers in Berlin, Beijing,
Tokyo, New York City, London and Washington, D.C. As part of this initiative,
IBM expects to retrain or hire as many as 4,000 new analytics consultants and
professionals globally.

IBM is creating a smarter, more connected healthcare system that delivers
better care with fewer mistakes, predicts and prevents diseases, and empowers
people to make better choices. This includes integrating data so doctors,
patients and insurers can share information seamlessly and efficiently. IBM
also helps clients apply advanced analytics to improve medical research,
diagnosis and treatment in order to improve patient care and help reduce
healthcare costs.

Follow developments on IBM Business Analytics at:
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About IBM
For more information about IBM, visit: http://www.ibm.com/think

To see a video on smarter healthcare go to http://tinyurl.com/cdqjuo

Contact:
Holli Haswell
512-590-8879
hhaswell@us.ibm.com

SOURCE IBM

Holli Haswell, +1-512-590-8879, hhaswell@us.ibm.com