Operation of IBM's artificial intelligence system "Watson" to change future cancer treatment will be started

ByMr Seb

Artificial intelligence system developed by IBM "Watson(Watson) "to help treat cancer" Cancer "was started in the United States and Canada. Watson stores huge amounts of past medical data and papers in a database and by comparing it with actual patient medical data, information on treatment policies and medicines considered to be the most appropriate for doctors and patients It is a system that suggests.

IBM's Watson supercomputer to speed up cancer care - BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32607688

We started utilizing this system in 14 medical institutions in the United States and Canada. It is said to have the top medical level in the nationCleveland ClinicAnd Nebraska State University ·The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer CenterMedical institutions such as medical institutions are on top.

Watson stores an enormous amount of medical data related to cancer in the past and analyzes patient data gathered from each hospital at high speed and seems to be the best for each patient while referring to past data Proposing treatment policies and drugs to administer,Support for doctors and patients to make decisionsto hold. It seems already accepted favorably by the doctor of utilization, and daily diagnosis contents and measures etc. are added to Watson successively, and it is supposed to be utilized also for utilization after that.

Washington State University · Doctor Lucas Waltman of Washington State University · McDonnell Genome Institute said that using Watson "As one patient fighting cancer, I am cancer of cancer Unfortunately, unfortunately, it is unfortunate that, when analyzing genes of cancer and diagnosing each patient and deciding on treatment policy, a team of professional doctors But it will take a couple of weeks, which will be dramatically shortened by using Watson. "

ByIbmphoto 24

Watson is a system that understands and learns the natural language used by humans and can answer appropriate questions based on huge amount of past data on the contents asked. Watson is often regarded as a type of supercomputer, but its size is compact as unexpectedly as "refrigerator 10 cars". The processing capability showing performance is also about 80 Tera FLOPS (80 trillion times per second), which is a supercomputer of China "2014 as having the world's best performance"Tianhe No. 2"It is about 400 times smaller than the actually measured value of 33.86 Peta FLOPS (3 K 3860 trillion times per second), and it never has the latest performance.

However, Watson is developed with an emphasis on judgment capability that is similar to "artificial intelligence" rather than its computing ability, and based on a large amount of data, Watson is expected to demonstrate its capability Think self-thinking and lead the best answerCognitive ComputingIt is the field of.


Patients diagnosed with cancer often use treatment methods such as surgical excision, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, etc. in cancer treatments so far. However, in the modern era when gene analysis technology has developed and hurdles of utilization are lowered, treatment targeting specific mutant cells causing cancer is enabled, and the number of patients who benefit from it gradually increases.

However, the problem here is the problem of time required for analysis as mentioned above. It is extremely difficult to analyze human genetic information which is said to be equivalent to approximately 100 gigabytes in a short time and to compare its contents with past cases, academic papers, cases of medical institutions, etc. It was.

IBM says that such work can be done in just a few minutes by using Watson. Steve Harvey, vice president of IBM Watson Health said, "With this technology we are going to bring in newly, cognitive computing plays an important role in 'fight against cancer', one of the greatest challenges of mankind It will be possible to fulfill this, which will be a new way we could not have done so far. "

ByIbmphoto 24

Each medical institution that utilizes Watson will pay a fee to IBM, but the amount is unclear. There are 14 medical institutions that incorporated the system at the time of article creation, and 11 more medical institutions are scheduled to be added within 2015.

ByIbmphoto 24

In the situation where IBM is working together with various aspects using Watson. In the summer of 2014, we entered into a business tie-up with Apple and became a topic by having a strategic cooperation system in terms of software and hardware.

A huge company business tie-up with Apple and IBM, impact shocks to enterprise service industry - GIGAZINE


And a partnership in a form to ride on the partnership between the two companies is planning the tablet terminal business for the elderly by Japan Post. this is"IBM MobileFirst for iOSIt is based on the mechanism of enterprise application called "Watson's technology is utilized in the background."

The elderly tablet Nippon Poste to develop with Apple · IBM NHK News


The contents of Watson are explained in detail on the special page of IBM Japan. In February 2015, the start of Japanese training by partnership with SOFTBANK has been announced, and it seems that full-scale Japanese correspondence is being promoted.

IBM Watson (Watson) - Japan
http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/jp/ja/ibmwatson/


In this way, Watson seems to show active in the field of medical care and welfare, but its ability is also demonstrated in other fields. In 2011, America's famous quiz show "Jeopardy!It is also known as an episode that appeared in "Jeopardy!" And tried quizzes on human opponents and got more prizes than human.

IBM Question Answering System "Watson" challenges quiz show! - Japan