How Memorial Sloan-Kettering is Training Watson to Personalize Cancer Care

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As a longtime fan of the TV quiz show, Jeopardy!, I was fascinated when I watched an IBM computer named Watson beat all-time Jeopardy! champions, two years ago.

I was particularly interested because my friend and colleague Larry Norton had previously alerted me to the fact that systems like IBM Watson could be harnessed to improve cancer care and research. Combining the abilities to process massive amounts of data and using natural language processing could not only accomplish amazing things ... like winning Jeopardy!, but also revolutionize care and research, accelerating progress for people with cancers. After a year on this project, I remain as excited today as I was on day one.

Over the past year, we at Memorial Sloan-Kettering have worked with an IBM team to train Watson to help assist medical professionals in choosing treatments for lung and breast cancers. We are sharing our knowledge and expertise in oncology to help Watson learn everything it can about cancer care and how Memorial Sloan-Kettering's experts use medical information and their experience in personalized cancer treatments.

Cancers are illnesses that continually humble doctors. A major leap forward in understanding these diseases over the last 40 years is realizing the complexity of these illnesses. You may notice that I have been using the word cancers instead of cancer. I do it deliberately, as a reflection of what we have learned. Doctors treating these illnesses know how different they are from person to person. We need better ways to help us understand the complexity and variation of these diseases to improve care and research. Textbook and guideline-based treatments are a good place to start, but they can't address the many biological and other factors affecting the course and aggressiveness of cancers.


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