Medical information from some 215 million people is set to be absorbed into IBM Corp.’s public cloud later this year as part of its newly announced acquisition of Truven Healthcare Analytics Inc. for $2.6 billion. The records will be accompanied by the Michigan-based vendor’s more than 5,000 employees, which include hundreds of data scientists, clinicians, regulatory professionals and other domain experts.

The deal should provide a major boost for Big Blue’s burgeoning healthcare analytics business, which was formed early last year from two smaller acquisitions in the medical data management field. The pair, Explorys Inc. and Phytel Inc., together contributed records from about 95 million patients to the pile, which is now poised to nearly triple in size thanks to the purchase of Truven. However, the arguably most important asset that Big Blue will gain through the deal is not the company’s data cache or even its battle-hardened workforce, but rather its customer base.

Truven claims to serve more than 8,500 organizations in practically every part of the healthcare sector. The company sells analytics software that enables hospitals to find out how they can improve patient care, automates fraud prevention for insurers and helps drug makers identify untapped markets. It’s even got a consulting arm that focuses on assisting government agencies with implementing healthcare policies. What all these customers share in common is the fact that the vendor helps support their most mission-critical work, which will give IBM’s sales force a valuable opening.

Big Blue boasts a formidable lineup of healthcare analytics services that should appeal to many of the customers that it’s obtaining as part of Truven. The flagship of the portfolio is a cloud-based incarnation of Watson introduced last year that is touted as a one-stop platform for processing patient and clinical data. And then there are the solutions that the company gained through its other acquisitions, notably Explorys’ treatment research platform and the hospital population tracking technology of Pytel. Just to top it off, IBM also bought a suite of services for handling medical images last August in a deal valued at a billion dollars.

Overall, the company has spent more than $4 billion on its healthcare business in the past year. It’s a telling sign of how much is at stake for IBM, especially considering that the figure constitutes only a fraction of what the company has invested in its broader analytics strategy so far. And the buying spree shows no sign of slowing any time soon.

Image via DasWortgewand