Mayo Clinic and IBM have announced plans to pilot Watson, the IBM cognitive computer, to match patients more quickly with appropriate clinical trials. A proof-of-concept phase is currently underway, with the intent to introduce it into clinical use in early 2015.
Researchers hope the increased speed also will speed new discoveries.
Clinical trials provide patients with access to new and emerging treatments, yet enrolling participants in trials is one of the more difficult parts of clinical research. Currently it is done manually, with clinical coordinators sorting through patient records and conditions, trying to match them with the requirements of a given study protocol. At any given time, Mayo Clinic is conducting over 8,000 human studies in addition to the 170,000 that are ongoing worldwide. Watson's cognitive computing ability will help sift through available Mayo clinical trials and ensure that more patients are accurately and consistently matched with promising clinical trial options.
This version of Watson will be especially designed for Mayo Clinic. As it progresses in its tasks and matures through this collaboration, it will learn more about the clinical trials matching process, become even more efficient and likely more generalisable. Watson also may help locate patients for hard-to-fill trials, such as those involving rare diseases.
Many clinical trials at Mayo Clinic and elsewhere are not completed due to lack of sufficient enrollment. Enrollment in general could be increased by the Watson project. In spite of well-organized efforts, even at Mayo Clinic, just five percent of patients take part in studies. Nationally, the rate is even lower, at three percent. Mayo hopes to raise clinical trial involvement to include up to 10 percent of its patients. Researchers say the higher participation also should improve the quality of research outcomes.
To ensure Watson has the required expertise to assist with clinical trial matching, Mayo experts are working with IBM to expand Watson's corpus of knowledge to include all clinical trials at Mayo Clinic and in public databases, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. The new Watson system is being trained to analyze patient records and clinical trial criteria in order to determine appropriate matches for patients.
Mayo and IBM are discussing other applications for Watson in the future.
