Deborah DiSanzo has stepped down as the head of IBM Watson Health, the troubled healthcare arm of IBM. She will move to IBM Cognitive Solutions' strategy team, and Cognitive Solutions and IBM Research senior vice president John Kelly will take her place at IBM Watson Health.
IBM Watson has focused on artificial intelligence-based healthcare tools. But the division came under fire after Stat reported it recommended erroneous and unsafe cancer treatments. IBM Watson Health struggled with internal disputes and laid off employees in 2018.
But Watson was a bright spot in what was otherwise a tough quarter for IBM's cognitive computing software division, which had a 6% decrease in revenue year over year despite growth in Watson Health, security solutions and certain analytics areas.
Overall, IBM's revenue fell 2% year over year to $18.8 billion.
Before her time as general manager of IBM Watson Health, DiSanzo was in charge of Philips Healthcare. She previously served as general manager of Heartstream, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard, where DiSanzo had been worldwide marketing manager.
"John Kelly will continue leading Watson Health as we continue to grow and scale this successful business," according to a company statement. Kelly has already worked with IBM Watson in his current role, in which he's pushed for growth in the division, among others. He's been at the company since 1980.
