Dive Brief:
- IBM Watson Health’s cognitive technology matched tumor board treatment recommendations in 96% of lung cancer cases and cut clinical trial screening time by 78% — from 1 hour and 50 minutes to 24 minutes, the tech company announced Thursday. The data were presented at ASCO 2017 in Chicago.
- Watson for Oncology now includes prostate cancer, meaning added support for 80% of cases by the end of this year.
- Meanwhile, nine new organizations have signed on to Watson’s oncology offerings, bringing the global total to 55 in 15 countries, including the U.S. and Canada. Among the new adoptees are Taipei Medical University in Taiwan and Icon Group in Australia.
Dive Insight:
IBM has been revving up its healthcare enterprise with initiatives in population health, cancer and precision medicine. In October, Big Blue and Siemens Healthineers forged a global alliance aimed at helping providers deliver value-based care and lower the costs associated with treating patients with complex and chronic conditions like heart disease and cancer.
IBM Watson Health also launched a series of value-based cloud solutions that integrate patient data from EHRs and other sources to better depict patient populations, risk factors and warning signs at the individual, group and population health level.
Then in January, the company partnered with Illumina to expand access to precision oncology treatments using the Watson for Genomics cognitive computing platform and Illumina’s BaseSpace tumor sequencing process. With the combined technologies, researchers will be able to quickly sift through and interpret vast amounts of data on variant cancer genes from medical journals, clinical trials and other sources.
Speaking at HIMSS17 in February, IBM President and CEO Ginni Rometty outlined her guiding principles for applying artificial intelligence to healthcare. It must offer a range or services, be data transparent, domain-specific, cloud-based and on an open platform. With those guidelines in mind, AI could fuel a golden age in healthcare technology, she said.