Vizient Inc. Partners with IBM Watson Health to Help Support Healthcare Providers’ Performance Improvement Needs

IRVING, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vizient Inc., the largest member-driven healthcare performance improvement company in the United States, today announces it has entered into a partnership with IBM Watson Health. The partnership will allow each company to help better serve its customers in areas including performance benchmarking, strategic planning, and clinical and operational performance.

Through the partnership agreement, IBM Watson Health is withdrawing the following offerings from its portfolio and offering a transition path for its clients to Vizient’s analytics portfolio:

• IBM ActionOI®: Vizient will support the ActionOI functionality through Vizient Operational Data Base (ODB) which provides operational benchmarking plus services for peer networking.
• IBM CareDiscovery®: Vizient will offer Vizient Clinical Data Base (CDB) which provides clinical performance improvement plus OPPE reporting and new peer networking opportunities focused on operational and clinical performance improvement.
• IBM Market Expert®: Vizient will offer Vizient Sg2 Market Edge, which integrates strategic growth intelligence with advanced analytics to enable full continuum strategic planning.

“This streamlining of the Watson Health portfolio will enable us to focus on new strategies and innovations to help support health care providers and payers through the next stages of digital transformation,” says Barbara Hayes, General Manager, Payer and Provider, IBM Watson Health. “By leveraging data, insights, and emerging technologies like AI and Blockchain, Watson Health is working to provide solutions and services designed to help improve clinical decision making and simplify administrative processes, with the goal of a better overall patient experience.”

“Vizient’s focus on leveraging data to facilitate meaningful interactions across our membership has been core to our strategy to drive industry wide performance improvement through collaboration. These additions to our analytics portfolio will further strengthen our member-driven methodologies to more closely link quality and operational performance,” says Bharat Sundaram, Vizient’s President and Chief Operating Officer. “This partnership between Vizient and IBM is one more meaningful step in growing the critical mass of our solutions to a scale that allows for not only expanded benchmarking and networking abilities, but also allows organizations of all sizes and types to benefit from meaningful comparisons and identify practices that are truly best-in-class.”

About Vizient, Inc.

Vizient, Inc. provides solutions and services that improve the delivery of high-value care by aligning cost, quality and market performance for more than 50% of the nation’s acute care providers, which includes 95% of the nation’s academic medical centers, and more than 20% of ambulatory providers. Vizient provides expertise, analytics and advisory services, as well as a contract portfolio that represents more than $100 billion in annual purchasing volume, to improve patient outcomes and lower costs. Vizient has earned a World’s Most Ethical Company designation from the Ethisphere Institute every year since its inception. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Vizient has offices throughout the United States. Learn more at www.vizientinc.com.