Remember when that computer beat two Jeopardy winners in 2011? IBM Watson became famous for receiving $1 million through having millions of pages of Wikipedia on its hard drive, which it accessed during the game. (No Internet, though, that was not allowed.)
But from a trickster computer, the new aims of IBM Watson are a little more ... beneficial. At first its mandate was just on beating smart people. Now, it's trying to help them. One of the first big tasks of the supercomputer is helping out with cancer care.
"As a cancer patient myself, I know how important genomic information can be," said Lukas Wartman, assistant director of cancer genomics at the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, in an interview with the BBC.
"Unfortunately," he added, "translating cancer-sequencing results into potential treatment options often takes weeks with a team of experts to study just one patient's tumour and provide results to guide treatment decisions. Watson appears to help dramatically reduce that timeline."
According to IBM, this is how Watson figures this out: it uses a system similar to how people observe, interpret, evaluate and then decide. Because the computer can parse data faster than a human, it can potentially get information out quicker. According to IBM, this process is a great tool in environments ranging from kitchens to hospitals.
In this particular case, the BBC adds, Watson will be responsible for going through patient genomes (records of what genes are in their body), which can take up 100 gigabytes or more on a hard drive. Plus, it analyzes this information in concert with studies and clinical trials. This means that Watson can not only find the information, but present conclusions for doctors to analyze.
It's a test not only of Watson, but the 14 institutions that will need to figure out how best to share information. It's possible Watson will produce reams of data; the challenge will be figuring out what is important. However, in Forbes some doctors were saying that the system could reduce problems with, for example, doctors trying to make decisions about tumors. All too often, mutations result from missed calls.
But will the patients be happy with their information in a computer? Will the price of potentially finding a cure be enough for surrendering your very body's information to a hyperconnected machine? These are all things that the trial is trying to figure out. Information vs. action is the question for this, as is many health care decisions with data behind them.
Click here to learn more about HeroX's Clinical Trial Innovation Prize, which aims to increase the number of patient participants.
Top image: IBM Watson. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
