Two years after beating human champions on “Jeopardy!,” the cognitive computing system IBM Watson is ready for a new challenge: advising clinicians on the treatment of cancer. Announced on Feb. 8 by partners IBM, WellPoint, Inc., and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the new venture is one of the first commercially developed Watson-based products. Also announced at the same time is a set of utilization management tools to streamline the review process between patients’ physicians and health plans.
Using advances in natural language processing and analytics, Watson is able to process information in a way similar to how people think, according to a press release from the partners. Since its appearance on “Jeopardy!,” Watson has improved by 240% in system performance.
The Watson product in oncology, called Interactive Care Insights for Oncology, provides a Watson-based advisor, accessible through the cloud, that is intended to help identify individualized treatment options for patients with cancer, starting with lung cancer, according to the press release. In principle, oncologists anywhere will be able to access detailed treatment options to help them decide how best to care for a patient.
To prepare for its work in oncology, Watson has taken in more than 600,000 pieces of medical evidence, and 2 million pages of text from 42 medical journals and clinical trials, the press release states. Watson is able to search through 1.5 million patient records and provide physicians with evidence-based treatment options in seconds.
In less than a year, Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City has immersed Watson in the complexities of cancer and genetic research. Starting with 1,500 lung cancer cases, the medical center’s clinicians and analysts are training Watson to extract and interpret physician notes, lab results and clinical research, while sharing their expertise and experiences in treating patients with cancer.
“It can take years for the latest developments in oncology to reach all practice settings. The combination of transformational technologies found in Watson with our cancer analytics and decision-making process has the potential to revolutionize the accessibility of information for the treatment of cancer in communities across the country and around the world,” Craig B. Thompson, MD, the president and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said in a statement. “Ultimately, we expect this comprehensive, evidence-based approach will profoundly enhance cancer care by accelerating the dissemination of practice-changing research at an unprecedented pace.”
The Maine Center for Cancer Medicine, with headquarters in Scarborough, and WESTMED Medical Group in Purchase, N.Y., are the first two adopters of an application based on Watson’s cognitive computing used to help diagnose lung cancer and recommend treatment.
Date: April 10, 2013