Smart Health Care Payment Systems: Overhauling health care payment and management systems through the use of small personal devices (such as smart cards) that will automatically trigger financial transactions, the processing of insurance claims and the updating of electronic health records.This business has “graduated” from the incubator stage, and its products are now part of the IBM Healthcare Industry Solutions product offering.
Simplified Business Engines: Developing and bringing to market an intuitive, easyto- use, prepackaged set of Web 2.0 services and blade server offerings that allow small and mid-size businesses easily to tap applications customized to their own specific business needs.This business has graduated and is now a business platform offering in IBM’s software and systems business units.
Real-Time Translation Services: Offering advanced, real-time translation capabilities across major languages as a service for high-potential applications, industries and environments, such as health care, government, and travel and transportation.This project is ongoing in IBM’s Research Division, with funding to explore the viability of a variety of business models with clients.
Intelligent Utility Networks: Increasing the reliability and manageability of the world’s power grids by building in “intelligence” in the form of real-time monitoring, control, analysis, simulation and optimization. Pilot projects have been developed and are in use by utilities.The technology has become a core product of IBM’s public utility business.
3-D Internet: Partnering with others to take the best of virtual worlds and gaming environments to build a seamless, standards-based 3-D Internet — the next platform for global commerce and day-to-day business operations.The new business unit is focusing on building tools that others can use to design easy-to-use 3-D Internet systems. Ongoing work is under way building prototype engagements and exploring new business models.
“Digital Me”: Creating a secure, userfriendly service that simplifies storage, management and long-term access to the deluge of personal content that people accumulate (digital photos, videos, music, health and financial records, personal identification documents, files).This unit has been split into two promising projects. One targets managed services for analyzing multimedia content, and the other focuses on a user-centric approach to managing personal information. Both have been transferred to the Research Division for further exploration.
Branchless Banking for the Masses: Enabling existing and new financial institutions to provide basic banking services profitably (checking, savings, payments and microlending) to often remote, inaccessible populations in fast-growing emerging markets.This unit continues to work with major banks on establishing viable hubs for microfinance in target emerging markets.
Integrated Mass Transit Information System: Establishing on-demand systems for integrating, managing and disseminating real-time data for all of a municipality’s or region’s transit systems, optimizing buses, rail, highways, waterways and airlines.The new business unit has received important orders from England, Singapore, Dubai and Australia. Name changed to Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Electronic Health Record System: Creating a standards-based infrastructure to support automatic updating of, and pervasive access to, personal health care records and the integrating of patient data with global payer/provider transaction systems.IBM has decided to shelve this project because executives concluded that key decision makers are not ready to invest in electronic health record systems.
“Big Green” Innovations: Launching a new IBM business unit that will focus on applying the company’s advanced expertise and technologies to emerging environmental opportunities, such as advanced water modeling, water filtration via nanotechnology and effi cient solar power systems.The business unit successfully sold and carried out initial pilot projects. As this was going on, senior IBM executives drew on the unit’s work and other initiatives to launch the largest single initiative in IBM history: a billion-dollar program to change radically how IBM and its customers use energy and other resources for computing. Currently conducting dozens of pilots around data integration, modeling and management; infrastructure asset management; advanced meter management; and weather event management.