IBM Watson for Oncology

Main articles:

• Diagnosis of cancer
• Cancer therapy

Watson for Oncology studies the clinical record of the patient and scientific research, analyzes data, compares a set of factors, draws analogies, and then offers possible diagnoses and options of therapy. At the same time the solution does not apply for a role of the attending physician, responsibility for the made decision always lies on the person. As of August, 2016 Watson for Oncology uses information from 300 medical magazines, more than 200 textbooks and about 15 million pages of the text.

Watson for Oncology is the cognitive platform developed in the Memorial oncological center of Slouna-Kettering in New York and providing to oncologists methods of treatment of evidential medicine. The program selects individual methods of treatment, scales access to oncological examination and analyzes large volumes of medical literature, processing data more than 300 medical scientific magazines, 200 textbooks and nearly 15 million pages of the text. Watson also ranges treatment options, tying them to independent researches and clinical recommendations. Its capability to machine learning means that it constantly studies information, gaining the new value and knowledge eventually. Watson for Oncology learns to help doctors to develop plans of treatment for patients with the following diagnoses now: breast cancer, lung cancer, cancer thick and rectum, cancer of cervical department of a gullet, ovarian cancer, cancer of a stomach and prostate cancer.

2017: Partnership of IBM with Baheal Group in China

In June, 2017 IBM announced that the Baheal Pharmaceutical Group company expands a scope of Watson for Oncology on all territory of China. It became possible thanks to the reached long agreement on cooperation with IBM. As the main partner business according to the solution Watson for Oncology in China Baheal not only will accelerate process of implementation of cognitive technologies for treatment of patients, but also will promote distribution of Watson for Genomics and future innovative solutions of division of Watson Health in China.

Baheal has experience of cooperation with hospitals, working on from more than 12 thousand Chinese clinics. The company already implemented the solution Watson for Oncology in partner hospital of Institute of Qingdao and city clinic of Qingdao. The solution already applied more than 350 patients at treatment.

IBM is going to create an ecosystem which will help to implement machine learning in workflows of clinics and will be useful both to doctors, and patients. At the same time a system will correspond to the local legislation, including requirements to confidentiality of data and security.

Annually in China diagnose cancer for 4.3 million people, and 2.8 million patients die, ^[1] that makes a quarter of a total quantity of death in the world from this disease and one fifth total quantities of death in China.^[2] In spite of the fact that sharp increase in volume of medical data resulted in difficulties in their processing, it at the same time created opportunities for improvement of quality of treatment. Now about 50 thousand scientific works on^[3] oncology are annually published], and by 2020 the number of medical information will double each 73 days. It will exceed that volume of medical data which the person will be able effectively to process^[4]

2016: Implementation in China

In August, 2016 the American corporation IBM announced implementation of the cognitive Watson platform in the Chinese hospitals for the purpose of assistance in treatment of oncological diseases.

IBM signed the agreement with the Chinese company Hangzhou CognitiveCare. Through joint efforts partners will be engaged in software distribution of Watson for Oncology among medical institutions through the whole country. At the first stage of cooperation it is going to cover 21 hospitals.

IBM Watson will help with fight against cancer in China

The Hangzhou CognitiveCare company created in January, 2016 specializes in the sales of IBM Watson for Oncology and a customer support using this product in China. Hangzhou CognitiveCare is engaged in software localization of IBM Watson for Oncology which initial was available only in English. Hangzhou CognitiveCare aims at promotion of artificial intelligence technologies in medicine for improvement of diagnostics and cancer therapy.

IBM notes that by August, 2016 the number of oncological diseases steadily grows in the Pacific Rim, they are a basic reason of death in China. In 2015 in the country 4.3 million new cancer patients and 2.8 million death because of this disease are recorded. To the Chinese doctors the practician and the latest researches in the field of oncology is harder and harder to stay in the know of the best, reported in IBM. ^[5]

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