The healthcare industry is undergoing significant change driven by six disruptive forces – rapid digitization, changing consumer expectations, regulatory complexities, increasing healthcare demand, shortage of skilled resources and elevating healthcare costs. To meet the implication of these forces, healthcare organizations must excel in engaging with consumers, discovering new ideas and taking effective decisions. Currently, traditional analytics capabilities are unable to exploit maximum value from the ever increasing data resource constraining organization’s achievements and performance. But cognitive computing has the ability to bridge this gap and can open up fresh opportunities for the healthcare industry. It is already helping healthcare organizations to provide personalized care, effective decisions and more innovative solutions.

In a recent study conducted by IBM, top healthcare executives said that they believe cognitive computing will play a disruptive role and intend to invest in this capability in the future. Cognitive is helping healthcare and life sciences organizations to provide better service, discover insights and to take better and quick decisions.

The industry is whole-heartedly embracing the power of cognitive in transforming their business model and providing enhanced patient care.  American Heart Association and Welltok are leveraging cognitive computing power to develop first of a kind workplace health solution to transform heart health. New York Genome center puts cognitive ability to the test to help oncologists develop more personalized care. Manipal Hospital, a leading healthcare provider in India serving two million patients annually with 16 hospitals and 10 clinics is transforming cancer care in India with cognitive computing solution which will be used to transform care-management services and treatment for cancer patients across its corporate and teaching hospitals.

Cognitive computing can evolve the current state of healthcare as it can:

• empower patients and providers to manage health and wellness related issues more efficiently
• enable effective and timely clinical trial matching
• decide on the best treatment options with improved access to historical data and analysis
• improve patient experience thru automation & individualized treatment plans
• allow researchers to discover previously overlooked insights, esp in oncology or genomics

However, there are many challenges to a successful cognitive computing implementation. Developing a cognitive computing vision and roadmap that has executive level support is critical to make sure the future vision is achieved by organizations. Please share your viewpoints on the role of congnitive healthcare and join the #cognitivehealthchat tweetchat on Aug 11; 11 AM ET.