NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – IBM said today that it has partnered with the Cleveland Clinic to evaluate the use of its Watson supercomputer in a personalized oncology program at the clinic.
Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute's Genomic Medicine Institute will use Watson to identify patterns in genome sequencing and medical data that may help uncover new personalized cancer treatment options. According to the partners, researchers will draw on Watson's combination of cognitive services, deep computational biology models, and IBM's SoftLayer public cloud infrastructure.
"Using Watson's cognitive computing capabilities, Cleveland Clinic aims to offer cutting-edge care to millions of patients," Rob Merkel, VP and IBM Watson group healthcare leader, said in a statement. "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."
The alliance with the Cleveland Clinic follows IBM's announcement last month that it will collaborate with the Mayo Clinic on a pilot program to use Watson in matching patients with clinical trials. The partners said they are working to expand Watson's knowledgebase to include all clinical trials at Mayo, as well as those in public databases such as ClinicalTrials.gov.