Watson continues to investigate
Artificial intelligence of the Watson supercomputer
will be used to fight brain cancer
DailyTechInfo based on IEEE Spectrum: IBM Watson Takes on the Genetics of Brain CancerTwenty patients suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer will soon have another member of the medical team serving them.
Only it will not be an ordinary person, the artificial intelligence of IBM's famous Watson supercomputer will act in this role. The main goal of the program, carried out by specialists from IBM and the New York Genome Center, is an in-depth study of genetic mutations, which will allow oncologists to understand the causes of diseases, develop new effective methods of treatment and test them on voluntary participants.
IBM is positioning the Watson supercomputer artificial intelligence system as a technology capable of revolutionizing the literal meaning of the term in the field of healthcare. This will be possible thanks to the system's capabilities to analyze data described in natural language, self-study and quickly process huge arrays of heterogeneous information. Over the past two years, the Watson supercomputer has been involved in the project of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in which he studied the features of medical terminology and the language in which doctors communicate with each other.
As part of the new project, the Watson supercomputer will not only have to "shovel" tons of medical literature from the field of oncology in search of useful information. The artificial intelligence system will analyze the genetic data of 20 patients, while analyzing the genome of both healthy cells and cancer cells. This will be done in order to determine the types of mutations in cancer cells, while taking into account the characteristics of each patient's body.
Determination of the DNA sequence of malignant cells, due to the variety of types of mutations, is a "fountain of genetic information", while each of the patients may have their own set of mutations. Oncologists are only now approaching the verge of understanding the meaning of genetic information, and the process of searching for this value can take, depending on the patient's body, from several weeks to several months of work by a team of qualified physicians. And this, you will agree, is a very long time for a patient who has from 12 to 14 months to live from the moment of diagnosis of brain cancer.
The Watson supercomputer can take over the function of genome analysis, it is able to analyze genetic data, while performing a parallel search in hundreds of thousands of medical documents and articles, literally in a matter of seconds of time. Having determined the set of mutations that exist in the cancer cells of the patient, the supercomputer can select a complex of types of treatment and drug effects that will have the most effective effect on cancer cells.
The current project is designed primarily to assess the capabilities of artificial intelligence systems in the field of oncology, all final decisions on measures and methods of treatment will be made by one or a panel of qualified physicians. If the project is implemented successfully, the Watson supercomputer will continue to "swallow" medical knowledge further, becoming smarter and smarter. And now a team of programmers is preparing some new features of the artificial intelligence system that will allow the system to take into account its own successes and mistakes made in earlier periods of time when making decisions.
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