IBm Watson has made some big moves in the areas of health care and Blockchain technology. The high-tech computer system will now make a treatment plan for brain cancer patient in just 10 minutes. IBM has also announced a major partnership with Sony to secure education using blockchain technology.
According to IEEE.org, the IT service giant has just announced a major breakthrough in the medical industry. The science-focused website reported that a new research has been conducted that showed the huge potential of AI-enhanced medicine to improve patient health care.
The said research work was part of a collaboration between IBM and the New York Genome Center that was first announced in 2014. The research was conducted to study the genomics of a few dozen brain cancer patients and it involved a beta version of IBM Watson for Genomics, the website reported.
Laxmi Parida, who leads the IBM Watson research team, has made some good points about the research done on the brain cancer patients. Parida said that most cancer patients don’t have their entire genome checked for mutations. Instead, the research team decided to run a panel test that focuses only on a subset of genes, which known to play a key role in cancer.
IBM Watson’s main strength has always been in its natural language processing capabilities, which reportedly can pierce through the huge 23 million journal articles currently stored in the government listings and other existing data sources.
Additionally, the high-tech system has also given green light to access patients’ electronic health records, but those records were not included in the research study.
IBM Watson, a close look
For starters, IBM Watson is a question answering computing system that IBM developed to use advanced natural language processing and machine learning technology.
The system runs on the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and used Apache Hadoop framework to enable distributed computing.
The system made its first commercial health care application in February 2013, when IBM announced that IBM Watson will be used for lung cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
In 2013, IBM teamed up with MD Anderson Cancer Center on a pilot program to further the center’s capability to eradicate cancer.
IBM also announced a partnership with Maine Center for Cancer Medicine and Westmed Medical Group in New York. The partnership involved testing the IBM Watson supercomputer system to recommend better treatment for lung cancer.
In addition to health care and medical research, IBM Watson has also been used in weather forecasting. In August 2016, IBM announced that it would utilize the supercomputer system to analyze data collected from over 200,000 Weather Underground personal weather stations and also data from IBM’s Deep Thunder project, which aims to improve local forecasting.
IBM gets more serious about blockchain technology
IBM has recently announced a partnership with Japan’s Sony to use blockchain technology to secure and share student records. Reports said that the Japanese tech giant plans to launch the new service sometime in 2018.
The new service will be using the IBM Blockchain offering, which made its official debut in March 2017. It will allow educators to share information on student progress and development. Sony, according to the latest reports, is expecting both primary and higher educational institutions as users of this new service. Sony is reportedly keen on adding additional educational services, using the blockchain technology.
The Japanese giant further hinted that it will continue exploring the blockchain technology for future uses. One potential application for the tech is on the logistics and supply chain space.
