WIKIMEDIA, CLOCKREADYIBM’s Watson is one busy machine. Already deployed to aid researchers and clinicians at several institutions, the “cognitive computer” is now helping oncologists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to sift through reams of patient records and sort individuals afflicted with cancer into appropriate clinical trials. “In an area like cancer, where time is of the essence, the speed and accuracy that Watson offers will allow us to develop an individualized treatment plan more efficiently so we can deliver exactly the care that the patient needs,” Steven Alberts, chair of medical oncology at Mayo Clinic, said in a statement.
Watson could ease the burden on clinical trial coordinators by matching thousands of patients, each with a unique health history and suite of symptoms, with thousands of experimental protocols that are designed to capture specific individuals. This should benefit not only patients, but the scientists who are...
The computer, which will become more efficient at the task of enrolling patients by learning more about the clinical trials matching process as it goes, will get to work at Mayo in early 2015. Versions of Watson are already being used to perform similar duties at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the New York Genome Center, and Baylor College of Medicine.
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