The tech giant is geared up to create virtual health advisor to give personalized assistant to the cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers
International Business Machines Corporation and American Cancer Society have formed an alliance to make the most of the tech giant’s cognitive computing platform, Watson, by integrating its expertise with patient support services and cancer research offered by the non-profit organization.
On Tuesday, at the 13th annual World Health Care Congress –a conference which brings top executives from life sciences and health companies at a common place to have a thorough discussion regarding the important issues affecting the industry –CEO Ginni Rometty disclosed the tech giant’s “Watson Health” initiative. The two entities will offer accessibility of personalized and exhaustive cancer resources to the cancer patients, caregivers, and survivors.
Chief health officer of IBM, Kyu Rhee expressed that the cognitive technology had perused a huge amount of oncology literature however this initiative will require Watson to comprehensively learn about the cancer support relating to the support required by the “cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers in their journey.”
Each year, around 1.6 million Americans got diagnosed of this life-threatening disease. Additionally, the patients are in a desperate look out for the accurate information which specifically relates to their disease. The American Cancer Society has already assembled around 14,000 pages providing the detailed information regarding 70 different cancer topics. The data also relates to the early detection information and risk reduction. The vetted information is currently available on the entity’s website, named, cancer.org.
The Watson will take in the information and synchronize it with Watson Health Cloud –which is a secure storage of “de-identified data of the patients.” The information will then be act as a coherent basis for the health advisor to provide personal and direct assistance to the user without the necessity of internet searching.
Roughly, the system will work in the following manner: For instance, a woman has been diagnosed by a particular type of cancer for which she has signed up for the treatment but subsequently, after maybe first round of chemotherapy, she suffered excruciating pain then she could turn to the health advisor who, after going through the accumulated information of the patients having similar conditions, will recommend whether the sufferings is out of ordinary and a doctor should be recommended or it is normal. Over a period of time, the health advisor might figure out that the woman needs support sessions and can recommend a day –on which she has reported to feel best –to attend such sessions.
The extensive skills and format of the “health advisor” has not been confirmed yet. Both the entities intend to launch the service early next year. According to Rhee, the service can be made available as an app on phone or tablet or it can be conveniently integrated with Big Blue’s Watson for Oncology offering. Watson for Oncology is a platform which places deep clinical knowledge on the palms of the doctors so that they may make evidence based treatment decision. It was developed by collaborating with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and is currently being used in Thailand and India.
By collaborating the clinician focused platform with patient centric new advisor, the Big Blue looks for a successful approach to cancer treatment. The cognitive technology will first assist the doctors to come up with a clinical treatment decision and afterwards it will allow the doctors to smoothly transition over the “health advisor option” to give out the information on “localized cancer services” such as “volunteer transportation options.”
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