Dive Brief:

• CVS Health Thursday announced a partnership with IBM’s whiz computer, Watson, to help customers with medical treatments and prevention measures.

• The computer will use its powerful algorithms and analyze data from medical health records, drug prescriptions, fitness devices, and other elements to warn of certain implications, to bring up medical protocols, and to suggest lifestyle changes and treatments.

• The move is a major milestone in CVS’s pivot to become a healthcare service center as well as a pharmacy and a retailer of health and beauty products.

Dive Insight:

If doctors and clinics were wary of CVS and other pharmacy retailers moving into healthcare services, this should make them really nervous.

And if there’s an area that is woefully behind when it comes to healthcare, it’s data collection, analytics, and a comprehensive approach to patient care. The Affordable Care Act mandates some improvements in those areas, but the sector remains hostage to a myriad of paper forms and a lack of coordination among doctors offices, hospitals, and pharmacies — and even patients themselves.

Watson is famous for beating human contestants on Jeopardy, but the supercomputer was developed to help people in a variety of professions — including physicians — with complex decision making. 

It’s difficult to understate the potential of Watson to bring together a host of variables that could impact a patient’s health and to determine key and important steps for patients to take to improve their health. It makes sense for CVS and Watson to bring this power to help people with chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes that require lifestyle changes and medications to treat. But this level of computing power could work for all sorts of issues.

In addition to having an impact on the health care sector, this CVS and Watson partnership could also help boost sales of wearables, considering that many people will find a deeper use for the information those watches spit out regularly. 

CVS isn’t the only drugstore retailer getting into the healthcare business, but for now, thanks to Watson, CVS appears to be leaving its drugstore-health services competition in the dust.