WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE:
IBM) today announced that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
(VA) is using Watson technology in a pilot to assist physicians in
helping accelerate the process of evidence-based medical decision
making. The VA joins leading healthcare organizations that are
working with IBM Watson to help improve efficiency and quality of
care being delivered. As part of the multi-year contract, the VHA
will also work with Watson for a clinical focus supporting veterans
with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
According to the VA's National Center for PTSD, there are
approximately 21.6 million veterans in the United States. As many as 20 percent of
veterans who served in Operations Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Enduring
Freedom (OEF) are impacted with PTSD. Additionally, 12 percent of
Gulf War veterans and 15 percent of Vietnam veterans suffer from PTSD.
With the amount of medical data doubling every three years and
the size and complexity associated with patient data in Electronic
Medical Records (EMR), Watson will be studied to see how it can
help VHA clinicians quickly make sense of an overwhelming amount of
data. Watson will make it possible for VHA physicians to interact
with medical data in natural language, process millions of pages of
patient information and medical literature to uncover patterns and
insights, and learn from each interaction. By sifting through reams
of clinical data, Watson is able to distill evidence and knowledge
within seconds.
Advanced as part of a separate collaborative effort with
Cleveland Clinic, IBM is applying Watson technology to an EMR
environment to help clinicians navigate and process medical
records, uncovering key information and unlocking hidden insights
within the data. Such an evidence-based approach has the potential
to help physicians make more informed decisions about patient care.
The VA will study how to use capabilities of the IBM Watson
Discovery Advisor to analyze healthcare data.
Available now as a cloud service, IBM's Watson Discovery Advisor
is designed to scale and accelerate discoveries. It can help reduce
the time physicians need to test hypotheses and formulate
conclusions that can advance their work – from months to days and
days to just hours – bringing new levels of speed and precision to
research and development.
Historically, the potential of EMRs has not been realized due to
the discrepancies of how the data is recorded, collected and
organized across healthcare systems and organizations. Watson's
cognitive capabilities provide a differentiated approach to
understanding the dynamics of the EMR environment and correlates
what's in the EMR with medical literature, research and articles,
making data from EMRs more meaningful at the point of care.
IBM is supporting VHA physicians and staff in setting up their
Clinical Reasoning System at the Department's data center in
Austin, Texas. Watson will ingest
hundreds of thousands of VHA documents, as well as medical records
and research papers in order to help study how Watson technology
can help physicians improve patient care in the clinical
environment. In this capacity, the VA is evaluating the system in
simulated pre-visit, visit, and post-visit situations where
physicians will conduct technical, functional and usability
assessments.
"IBM designed Watson to help solve some of the world's greatest
challenges, and I'm humbled to be working with the VA in helping
them, including enhancing treatment efforts for PTSD," said Anne
Altman, General Manager for U.S. Federal at IBM. "There's no more
important challenge than improving healthcare for our veterans and
we've seen how Watson can assist medical professionals and make it
easier for them to capture insight from so many sources and make
more informed decisions. The VA is poised to join other key
healthcare industry leaders who are already pioneering the use of
cognitive computing in healthcare."
About VHA
The Veterans Health Administration is home to the United States' largest integrated
healthcare system consisting of 150 medical centers, nearly 1,400
community-based outpatient clinics, community living centers, Vet
Centers and Domiciliaries. Together these healthcare facilities and
the more than 53,000 independent licensed healthcare practitioners
who work within them provide comprehensive care to more than 8.3
million* Veterans each year.
* From the National Center for Veterans Analysis and
Statistics — www.va.gov/vetdata
IBM Watson: Pioneering a New Era of Computing
IBM Watson represents a new era of computing in which apps and
systems interact with human users more naturally, augment our
knowledge with Big Data insights, and learn to improve how they
assist us.
Fueled by innovation from a mission to transform industries and
professions, Watson is uniquely positioned at the forefront of the
new era of computing, evidenced by an unmatched demonstration of
what cognitive systems can bring to transform decision-making. IBM
is delivering a range of cloud-based products and services to
clients in industries such as banking, healthcare, insurance,
retail and education.
In January 2014, IBM launched the
IBM Watson Group, a new business unit dedicated to developing and
commercializing cloud-delivered cognitive advisors. The move
signifies a strategic shift by IBM to deliver a new class of
software, services and apps that think, improve by learning, and
discover insights from massive amounts of Big Data.
IBM is investing $1 billion into
the Watson Group, focusing on development and research and bringing
cloud-delivered cognitive applications and services to market. This
includes $100 million available for
venture investments to support IBM's ecosystem of start-ups and
businesses building cognitive apps made with Watson.
For more information on IBM Watson, visit: www.ibmwatson.com
To join the social discussion about Watson, include the hashtag
#ibmwatson. Follow Watson on Facebook and see Watson on YouTube and
Flickr.
Check out the IBM Watson press kit at:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/27297.wss
Mitchell Derman
571-216-8712
mderman@us.ibm.com
Tod Freeman
415-320-5893
tefreema@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM