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Cleveland Clinic to partner with IBM’s Watson for cancer care pilot

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Research oncologists at Cleveland Clinic are partnering with IBM’s Watson supercomputer to develop new personalized medicine approaches and new cancer treatment options.

“The potential for leveraging the capabilities of Watson’s cognitive computing engine in personalized medicine could not be timelier,” Charis Eng, MD, PhD, chair and founding director of the clinic’s Lerner Research Institute’s Genomic Medicine Institute, said in a press release. “Clinicians will benefit from the knowledge and insight provided by Watson in the care of their patients.”

To correlate a patient’s genetic information to data from thousands of pages of research and large datasets from clinical records, vast amounts of computing power are required. The goal is to use that computing power to identify patterns in genome sequencing, gain new insights into cancer care and offer more patients tailored care.

The research will combine oncology experts with Watson’s cognitive services and deep computational biological models through IBM’s public cloud infrastructure, SoftLayer.

“We’re excited by our continued partnership with Cleveland Clinic,” Rob Merkel, vice president and IBM Watson Group health care leader, said in a press release. “Together we aim to advance a new era of cognitive computing that will aid in the acceleration of new discoveries and bring forward new breakthroughs in personalized medicine.”

Watson, described as “cognitive technology” by IBM, famously defeated Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings in a Jeopardy! challenge in February 2011. Watson was not connected to the Internet during the competition.

In January 2014, IBM launched a business unit for Watson. HemOnc Today reported in April 2011 that Watson had been used to interpret radiologic images, and in September, IBM and Mayo Clinic announced a partnership to better enroll patients into clinical trials.