American multinational technology and consulting corporation IBM Corp. has agreed to purchase medical image company Merge Healthcare Inc. for the price of $1 billion and combine it with the company's newly established health analytics division that is powered by its Watson supercomputer.
The technology company said that it plans to acquire images and data collected from Merge Healthcare's own medical imaging management system and combine them with IBM Watson's cloud-based health care computing program.
Watson's system is designed to analyze large volumes of data, interpret complex questions stated in natural language and provide answers to these questions based on available evidence.
The new agreement between IBM and Merge Healthcare will allow researchers and physicians to collate and examine various data such as the family and medical history of a patient, data on other patients with similar symptoms of illness and clinical studies, trials and findings.
The deal with Merge Healthcare is part of IBM's efforts to aggressively expand in the sector of health care information technology. It is the technology company's third primary acquisition related to health since the launch of its Watson Health division in April.
With its latest acquisition of Merge Healthcare, IBM will gain access to 7,500 healthcare sites in the United States. The two companies said that shareholders of Merge Healthcare will receive $7.13 for each share based on a 31.8 percent premium.
