IBM Watson Health to invest in research for AI application

IBM Watson Health plans to make a ten-year, $50 millioninvestment in research collaborations with two separate academic centers –Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is a teaching hospital of Harvard MedicalSchool, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center ­– to advance the science ofartificial intelligence (AI) and its application to major public health issues.

The scientific collaborations with each institution willfocus on critical health problems that are ideally suited for AI solutions.Initial areas of study are expected to include the use of AI to improve theutility of electronic health records (EHRs)[1] and claims data[2] to addresssignificant public health issues like patient safety[3], precision medicine[4]and health equity[5]. The research will also explore physician and patient userexperience and interactions with AI technologies.

"Building on the MIT-IBM Watson Lab announced last year,this collaboration will include contributions from IBM Watson Health's long-standingcommitment to scientific research and our belief that working together with theworld's leading institutions is the fastest path to develop, advance, andunderstand practical solutions that solve some of the world's biggest healthchallenges," said Kyu Rhee, M.D., M.P.P., vice president and chief healthofficer at IBM Watson Health. "Today, for example, physicians are spendingan average of two hours with their electronic health records and deskwork forevery hour of patient care,[6] a phenomenon the American Medical Associationsays is leading to a steady increase in physician burnout.[7] AI is the mostpowerful technology we have today to tackle issues like this one, but there isstill a great deal of work to be done to demystify the real role of AI inhealthcare with practical, proven results and clear-cut best practices. Byputting the full force of our clinical[8] and research team[9] together withtwo of the world's leading academic medical centers, we will dramaticallyaccelerate the development of real-world AI solutions that improve workflowefficiencies and outcomes."

A joint effort

Drawing on the respective areas of expertise from each organization, the collaborations will be a joint effort among IBM Watson Health's newly appointed vice president and chief science officer, Gretchen Purcell Jackson, M.D., Ph.D.; David Bates, M.D., M.S., chief of general internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School; Kevin Johnson, M.D., M.S., chair of the department of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; and Gordon Bernard, M.D., executive vice president for research, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

"IBM Watson Health has had a long history of leading inscientific research," said Jackson. "These collaborations give ourscientists at IBM Watson Health the opportunity to work with some of the besthealth informatics researchers in the world to advance the field in the areasof artificial intelligence, clinical decision support, and implementationscience. Medical data is expected to double every 73 days by 2020[10]. As apracticing surgeon, I often had to make critical decisions about children'slives without time to dig for information buried in electronic health recordsor sift through thousands of studies in the literature. Our collaborativeresearch will unlock new insights that affect broad health stakeholders: fromproviders, payers, governments and life science companies to ultimately themost important stakeholder, patients, and seek to improve health around theglobe."

"We all know that the future of health belongs to AIbut today health around the globe is siloed and not actionable, making timelyinsights difficult to obtain," explained Bates. "Through AI we havean opportunity to do better, and our hope is to find new ways through scienceand partnerships with industry leaders like Watson Health to unlock the fullpotential of AI to improve the utility of the EHR and claims data to addressmajor public health issues like patient safety."

Sources:
[1] American Medical Association and Electronic Medical Records:  https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/digital/improving-electronic-health-records

[2] EMR + Claims data and the Longitudinal Health Record:  https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson-health/using-ehr-population-health-whats-missing/

[3] World Health Organization and Patient Safety:  https://www.who.int/patientsafety/en/; Crossing the Quality Chasm:  http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/Global/News%20Announcements/Crossing-the-Quality-Chasm-The-IOM-Health-Care-Quality-Initiative.aspx; Medical Errors are 3rd leading cause of death:  https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

[4] Centers for Disease Control and Precision Medicine:  https://www.cdc.gov/features/precision-medicine/index.html; Precision Medicine in Cancer Treatment:  https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/precision-medicine; Vanderbilt Precision Medicine Initiative:  https://www.vumc.org/cpm/

[5] World Health Organization and Health Equity:  https://www.who.int/topics/health_equity/en/,  https://www.who.int/healthsystems/topics/equity/en/; American Public Health Association and Health Equity:  https://www.apha.org/topics-and-issues/health-equity

[6]  https://ehrintelligence.com/news/primary-care-doctors-spending-6-hours-daily-on-ehr-data-entry

[7]  https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/ama-president-calls-for-end-to-electronic-health-record-abuse

[8]  https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson-health/do-doctors-fear-ai/

[9]  https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson-health/watson-health-get-facts/

[10]  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116346/