OREANDA-NEWS. April 14, 2015. IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced plans to acquire Phytel, a leading provider of integrated population health management software.

The acquisition bolsters the company’s efforts to apply advanced analytics and cognitive computing to help primary care providers, large hospital systems and physician networks improve healthcare quality and effect healthier patient outcomes. Phytel will become part of IBM’s new Watson Health unit, launched today.

Phytel develops and sells cloud-based services that help healthcare providers and care teams work together to ensure care is effective and coordinated in order to meet new healthcare quality requirements and reimbursement models. It was just named the leader in the population health management category by the 2014 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services. Population health management makes it possible to deliver proven quality of care to patients based on evidence of what works best, so physicians can deliver higher value.

The software works with healthcare providers’ current electronic health record technology to reduce patient hospital readmissions and automates population health management, improving 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.

“IBM is continuing a significant investment in supporting the needs of our healthcare clients by bringing together powerful cognitive computing with new insights into all the factors that influence a person’s health,” said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson. “The acquisition of Phytel furthers our mission by giving providers insights into patient health from data about patient behaviors and their engagement with care plans.”

“Phytel was founded on the principle of delivering patients continuous proactive care and providing collective information about the ongoing health of patients across entire communities,” said Steve Schelhammer, CEO, Phytel. “By combining our powerful population health management capabilities with the cognitive insight of IBM, together we will help providers turn insight into action to improve health quality.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About Phytel

The premier company empowering physician-led population health improvement, Phytel provides physicians with proven technology to deliver timely, coordinated care to their patients. Phytel's SaaS-based registry uses evidence-based chronic and preventive care protocols to identify and notify patients due for service, while tracking engagement and measuring quality and financial results. For more information, please visit www.Phytel.com. Follow us on Twitter and find us on Facebook.

About IBM Watson Health

IBM and its vast ecosystem of clients, partners and medical researchers are accelerating the development of a new generation of data-driven applications and solutions built on IBM Health Cloud and IBM Watson cognitive solutions to advance health and wellness. For more information, please visit ibm.com/watsonhealth.

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