IBM Watson’s Truven Health Analytics acquisition and HIMSS preview: MedHeads recap [Video]

On last week’s MedHeads broadcast, Chris Seper was joined by MedCity News’ health IT and digital health experts, Stephanie Baum and Neil Versel to discuss IBM Watson’s $2.6 billion deal with Truven Health Analytics and to talk about what to expect from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society megaconference.

It’s almost been a year since the formation of IBM Watson Health (hence Seper’s birthday celebration).

The main topic of discussion was exploring why Watson Health is spending this kind of money on companies like Truven. As Versel pointed out, it’s because they want the data – they want a complete picture of health data in all domains.

But without using this data to creating products ready for market, what does Watson Health really have to show from its acquisitions thus far? Baum asked the question if this is really a data arms race. Where does the value come from if companies like Watson Health are essentially just trying to gather big data …