IBM Watson Health and Quest Diagnostics have introduced a new service, which will enable physicians to provide precision cancer treatments for patients across the US.
The new IBM Watson Genomics from Quest Diagnostics service will help to advance precision medicine by aggregating cognitive computing with genomic tumor sequencing.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) will integrate Watson’s corpus of scientific data with OncoKB, a precision oncology knowledge base that will offer precision treatment options for cancer patients.
The new service will include laboratory sequencing and analysis of a tumor’s genomic makeup, which will allow to disclose mutations that can be associated with targeted therapies and clinical trials.
Later, Watson will compare these mutations against relevant medical literature, clinical studies, pharmacopeia and annotated rules created by oncologists.
IBM Research and Cognitive Solutions senior vice president Dr John Kelly said: “The beauty of Watson is that it can be used to dramatically scale access to knowledge and scientific insight, whether a patient is being treated in an urban academic medical center or a rural community clinic.
Quest Diagnostics research, development and medical senior vice president and chief medical officer Dr Jay Wohlgemuth said: “Precision medicine is changing the way we treat cancer and giving new hope to people living with the disease.
“However, access to genomic sequencing and tumor analysis required to determine appropriate precision medicine treatments for a patient can be a challenge.”