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A Swiss hospital is to be the first in Europe to use IBM's artificial intelligence software to help determine treatment approaches for complex cancer cases, Labiotech.eu reports.

The Hôpitaux Universitaires Genève's Rodolphe Meyer tells Labiotech.eu that IBM's Watson for Genomics will enable clinicians there to more quickly determine a treatment course for cancer patients whose tumor genomes have been analyzed. "It usually takes hours to analyze results the traditional way, searching for literature and data on the different treatments that are available," Meyer tells it.

IBM's Watson for Genomics, meanwhile, can perform that task more quickly. As HealthcareITNews notes, the AI program extracts data from peer-reviewed articles, which is validated by experts before being bundled into a report that matches genomic alterations in patients' tumors to potential treatments. It adds that Hôpitaux Universitaires Genève plans to first use the program for complex cases, but may expand its use after a year.

Labiotech.eu notes that another IBM AI offering, Watson for Oncology, was criticized last year for sometimes offering inappropriate cancer treatments.