What IBM Consulting gets wrong in Healthcare
IBM Consulting's approach to Healthcare technology follows the same model that has driven their recent performance problems. Watson Health shut down after $4B+ investment — sold for parts to Francisco Partners
Healthcare technology operates under specific regulatory and operational constraints that generalist consulting firms consistently underestimate. Payer technology is dominated by legacy platforms that use AI to deny claims at scale while failing basic security audits. IBM Consulting's model does not account for the domain qualification required to navigate this environment.
Compliance in Healthcare is not a consulting deliverable — it is an architectural constraint. IBM Consulting treats compliance as a separate workstream that produces documentation. The systems that result require significant remediation before they can survive an audit in a healthcare environment.
What we deploy instead
Our healthcare engineering teams are domain-qualified before they are assigned to an engagement. They understand the regulatory framework — HIPAA and SOC 2 — as an engineering constraint, not a compliance checklist.
Every system we deploy for a healthcare client is compliant at the infrastructure layer. The architecture enforces the controls. ALICE validates compliance at every commit. The result is a system that passes audits because it was built to, not because documentation was assembled after the fact.
HIPAA and SOC 2 built into the architecture from day one — enforced automatically by ALICE at every commit.
Fixed-price engagements. Production system in 8-20 weeks. No discovery phase. No change orders.
Domain-qualified engineers with healthcare experience. The senior engineer who scopes the engagement is the senior engineer who delivers it.
Full source code and documentation transferred at close. No licensing. No managed services dependency.
The compliance difference
HIPAA and SOC 2 compliance is an architectural constraint in healthcare. IBM Consulting treats it as a consulting deliverable. We build it into the infrastructure.
What switching from IBM Consulting looks like
A typical healthcare engagement runs 10-20 weeks to a production system. Team: 8-16 engineers, all domain-qualified. Fixed price. Full IP transfer at close.
Architecture review and scope definition. We review existing deliverables and identify gaps.
Scope locked, team assembled, first sprint underway. Working code from week two.
First production milestone — a working integration or system component, not a document.
Full IP transfer. Source code, documentation, operational runbooks. Your team runs the system.
Failed Vendor Recovery Playbook
Step-by-step framework for recovering from a failed IBM Consulting engagement — from emergency stabilisation through full re-platforming. 4-phase playbook covering stabilise, assess, transition, and normalise.