AI-Powered Oncology Treatment Planning

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and IBM collaborated on the development of IBM Watson-based decision support tools to provide medical professionals with improved access to current and comprehensive cancer data and practices. The goal is to help doctors create individualized cancer diagnostic and treatment recommendations based on current evidence. ## Project Overview The initiative combined the computational power of IBM Watson and its natural language processing ability with MSKCC's clinical knowledge, existing molecular and genomic data, and vast repository of cancer case histories. Watson for Oncology (WFO) is a cognitive computing system that helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient's medical record. ## How Watson for Oncology Works IBM Watson gained fame by beating human contestants on Jeopardy! It can interpret queries in natural language and uses statistical analysis, advanced analytics, and powerful processors to search millions of pages in seconds, delivering evidence-based statistically-ranked responses. MSKCC's world-renowned oncologists assisted in developing Watson to synthesize a patient's medical information with vast arrays of continuously updated treatment guidelines, published research, and insights from deep clinical experience. The tool provides physicians with individualized recommendations along with a detailed record of the data and evidence used to reach each recommendation. ## The Need for AI in Oncology Cancer is not one disease but hundreds of subtypes, each with a different genetic fingerprint. Significant discoveries in molecular biology and genetics have delivered new insights into cancer biology and strategies for targeting specific molecular alterations in tumors—but these advances have also ratcheted up the complexity of diagnosing and treating each case. Approximately 85% of patients with cancer are not treated at specialized medical centers, and it can take years for the latest developments in oncology to reach all practice settings. ## Development Status Development work was underway for the first applications covering lung, breast, and prostate cancers, with piloting to select oncologists planned for late 2012 and wider distribution for late 2013. The collaboration complemented an earlier IBM and WellPoint announcement focusing on putting Watson to work on oncology solutions.