Watson for Drug Discovery

2019: The termination of development and sales because of the flat demand

In the middle of April, 2019 IBM stopped development and sale of the AI- a product Watson for development of drugs (Watson for Drug Discovery) because of bad financial performance.

AI software of Watson for creation of drugs is necessary to nobody: IBM stopped development

This software was submitted in 2014 to help the pharmaceutical companies with development of new drugs. It was supposed that Watson for Drug Discovery will reveal communications between genes of microorganisms, medicines, diseases and other indicators, analyzing a set of scientific data. Thanks to this service researchers could generate new hypotheses, using dynamic visualization and reasonable forecasts. In 2014 the partnership agreement with IBM was signed by such large companies as Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer.

Though IBM will not sell or advance AI software of Watson for development of medicines any more, the pharmaceutical companies which are already using this software will continue cooperation, the representative of IBM Edward Barbini said. According to Barbini, IBM concentrates resources in the Watson Health program which is directed to work in adjacent area of clinical trials. Anyway, the needs of the market for data processing and opportunities of AI are extremely high even if separate types of software do not allow to reach assigned tasks.

The close message of the Watson project for development of drugs is followed by an unceasing shaft of criticism of other AI service IBM, Watson for Oncology – software of support of adoption of clinical solutions for oncologists. Despite these failures, on April 16, 2019 IBM announced the 10 percent growth of cloud revenue for the 12-month period which came to the end at the end of March, 2019 — up to $19.5 billion. This rise is partly caused by revenue growth of the company in the field of health care, including Watson Health service.^[1]

Notes