Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and IBM plan to collaborate on the development of a powerful tool built on IBM's Watson artificial intelligence platform that will provide medical professionals with improved access to current and comprehensive cancer data and practices, MSKCC said.
The initiative will combine the computational and language-processing ability of IBM Watson with MSKCC's clinical knowledge, existing molecular and genomic data, and repository of cancer case histories in order to create an outcome and evidence-based decision-support system, according to MSKCC.
Development work has begun for the first applications, which include lung, breast, and prostate cancers. The goal is to begin testing the tool with a small group of oncologists in late 2012, with wider distribution planned for late 2013, MSKCC said.
