IBM Watson Health and advanced medical technology company IDx have entered a five-year strategic alliance to advance eye health through cognitive computing applications.
The alliance aims to help primary care providers, hospitals, health systems and integrated delivery networks deliver value-based care to patients with diabetic retinopathy and other serious eye conditions such as glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration. The alliance expands IBM Watson Health's focus on eye health.
The alliance leverages more than a decade of IDx's ophthalmic image analysis work and IBM's cognitive healthcare offerings and global reach.
As part of the alliance, IBM Watson Health has the option to distribute IDx offerings. Initially, IBM Watson Health intends to distribute IDx-DR - an automated solution for diabetic retinopathy screening currently available in the 31 countries that comprise the European Economic Area. IBM Watson Health may expand its distribution of IDx-DR to Australia, Canada and the US upon regulatory approvals of the product.
According to the companies, there are 415 million adults with diabetes across the world today, with the number expected to grow by 50% to over 600 million by 2040.
They point out that each of these individuals is at high risk of developing diabetic retinopathy, which is one of the leading causes of preventable blindness in working age adults. Most people that develop diabetic retinopathy have no symptoms until irreversible vision loss had occurred, making early disease detection critical to prevent blindness.
"Over the past decades, productivity in healthcare has not kept pace with other sectors. Patients and providers worldwide are paying the price," says Dr Michael Abramoff, founder and president of IDx.
"Our mission at IDx has always been to transform the quality, accessibility and affordability of global healthcare through the automation of medical screening to support physicians' diagnoses. We are incredibly pleased to partner with IBM Watson Health, which shares this vision, and believe they will help us scale the IDx mission to its fullest potential."
"IDx-DR complements Watson's existing focus in eye health and brings to Watson a novel, secure server-based screening technology that prioritises patient safety - pairing expert clinician knowledge with transparent, human brain-inspired algorithms," says Anne Le Grand, vice-president of imaging for Watson Health.
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