IBM could be looking to sell the Watson Health division for a mere $1 billion, according to an Axios report. The question is why is IBM running away from the healthcare vertical just as it seems to be heating up, and for such a low price?
Just last month, Oracle spent $28 billion to buy digital health records company Cerner. Last spring, Microsoft spent close to $20 billion to buy Nuance, which is used heavily in the medical industry, boasting 10,000 healthcare customers. That’s huge money, suggesting that enterprise companies are looking to embrace the healthcare vertical and willing to spend big bucks to do it.
IBM launched Watson Health in April 2015 to much fanfare. It was supposed to take Watson, IBM’s artificial intelligence platform, and put it to work on healthcare problems. The argument went something like this. Even the best doctor can’t read all of the literature out there,