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IBM says it will pay $1 billion to acquire medical imaging and software company Merge Healthcare, part of an effort to boost the health care capabilities of Watson, its cognitive computing system. Merge's technology is used by 7,500 hospitals and doctor's offices to sort medical images and scans, as well as researchers and pharmaceutical companies. IBM said Thursday it hopes to combine the company's technology with its Watson system to help customers sort and analyze images, medical scans, lab results and other electronic health records. (8/8)

With a store in "almost every neighborhood" in the country, CVS pharmacies seemed the perfect match for Watson Health, IBM's big-data-crunching artificial intelligence system, officials from both companies said after the new partnership was announced last week. (Lauer, 8/6)