Dive Brief:
- IBM previewed a slew of new Watson-powered imaging solutions aimed at advancing personalized medical care at this week’s Radiological Society of North America annual meeting in Chicago.
- The new tools from Watson Health and Merge Healthcare range from peer review and physician support apps to a solution that helps reduce common causes of medical imaging errors.
- More than a decade of artificial intelligence research and machine learning went into these products, according to IBM.
Dive Insight:
Medical images account for at least 90% of all medical data, meaning the sheer number of studies can be overwhelming for physicians and radiologists, IBM said. At the same time, tools to enhance the interpretation of imaging studies are limited, the company added.
New offerings being previewed by Watson Health include:
- A cognitive peer review tool to help clinicians reconcile differences in a patient’s clinical evidence and data in their electronic health record;
- A cognitive data summarization tool that provides patient-specific clinical information for use in interpreting imaging exams;
- A cognitive physician support tool that integrates imaging data with other patient data to help physicians personalize care decisions; and
- A cognitive image review tool — called MedyMatch — for emergency room use in diagnosing strokes and brain bleeds.
The IT giant is also showcasing three new solutions from Merge:
- Marktation, a vehicle to help doctors interpret medical images with greater speed and accuracy, initially targeting mammography;
- Watson Clinical Integration Module, a cloud-based app aimed at increasing reader efficiency and cutting down on imaging errors, such as base rate neglect and framing bias; and
- Lesion Segmentation and Tracking Module, which helps to speed up interpretation and reporting of comparison studies in cancer patients and other longitudinal tracking situations.
IBM purchased Merge a year ago for $1 billion, combining it with Watson Health’s analytics unit to fuse together imaging and cloud-based storage and supercomputing. The deal gave IBM access to 7,500 healthcare sites.
In June, IBM and Watson Health announced a medical imaging collaborative — comprised of more than 15 health systems, academic medical centers and tech firms — to bring cognitive imaging into daily practice. The effort aims to help providers better detect and address cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions.