Why IBM just bought billions of medical images for Watson to look at

BM says that Watson, its artificial-intelligence technology, can use advanced computer vision to process huge volumes of medical images. Now Watson has its sights set on using this ability to help doctors diagnose diseases faster and more accurately. Last week IBM announced it would buy Merge Healthcare for a billion dollars. If the deal is finalized, this would be the third health-care data company IBM has bought this year (see "Meet the Health-Care Company IBM Needed to Make Watson More Insightful"). Merge specializes in handling all kinds of medical images, and its service is used by more than 7,500 hospitals and clinics in the United States, as well as clinical research organizations and pharmaceutical companies.