How Fitbit and IBM Watson are transferring the power of healthcare data from one hand to another

The last week saw a couple of very important announcements in the world of healthcare.

Wearable device pioneer Fitbit announced an IPO that could raise over $100 million. Fitbit is at the leading edge of a consumer and connected health revolution that promotes the notion of a “quantified self” through a wearable device that works as a fitness tracker.

Separately, IBM Watson Healthcare announced a major push into the healthcare analytics space through strategic partnerships with Mayo Clinic, one of the nation’s leading hospitals and medical research institutions, and Epic, a provider of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems with access to vast amounts of patient medical records. IBM has been aggressively pursuing access to patient data to feed the Watson engine, more recently through the acquisition of Explorys and Phytel. These acquisitions and partnerships deepen IBM’s commitment to extend Watson’s cognitive computing power to advance the quality of healthcare, specifically in areas such as cancer prediction and treatment.