IBM Corp recently said in a statement that it would buy Merge Healthcare Inc in a $1 billion deal. The American multinational also stated that it will merge the medical image company with it newly formed health analytics unit, powered by its famous Watson supercomputer.

By doing so, IBM is planning to combine data and images from Merge Healthcare's medical imaging management platform and Watson's cloud-based healthcare computing system.

The deal will prove to be beneficial for physicians and researchers to collect and analyze data such as patient's medical and family history, data on others with similar symptoms and clinical research, trials and outcomes.

Dougherty and co-analyst Brooks O'Neil said, “Imaging is central to effective diagnosis and treatment ... but it is increasingly important to share these images between providers to deliver high quality, cost-effective care”.

IBM has moved quite fast into the healthcare IT sector. The recent acquisition of Merge Healthcare will be its third major health-related acquisition since launching the Watson Health unit in April.

Stephen Gold, vice-president, IBM Watson, said in a statement that they will continue to build and invest from a research perspective in core technologies.

IBM’s acquisition of Merge will provide IBM with access to nearly 7,500 US healthcare sites. Merge Healthcare shareholders will get $7.13 per share at a premium of 31.8 percent to Wednesday's close, the companies said.

It was found that shares of Merge were trading at $7.08 by afternoon, whereas shares of IBM were at $156.33.