Stockholm-based Elekta will be collaborating with IBM Watson Health to offer Watson for Oncology with Elekta’s cancer care solutions. Under the terms of a new agreement, Elekta will sell Watson for Oncology beginning in early 2018 as a clinical decision support solution paired within Elekta’s digital cancer care solutions, including the MOSAIQ Oncology Information System. Elekta intends to offer both solutions in most markets around the world including the U.S., Brazil, certain major European and Asian markets, as well as India and Australia.
“Joining forces with IBM Watson Health positions Elekta as the first radiation therapy company to offer capabilities that combine conventional health information systems with artificial intelligence and cognitive cloud computing,” says Richard Hausmann, CEO of Elekta. “Our goal is to bring cutting edge artificial intelligence technology to the cancer care continuum, including treatment planning, enabling evidence-based treatment recommendations for every patient regardless of where they are treated. We are excited to be working with IBM Watson Health to achieve this shared vision.”
Watson for Oncology was developed by IBM in collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York. It can summarize key medical attributes of a patient, and provide information to oncologists to help them deliver treatment options based on training from MSK oncologists. Watson for Oncology ranks the treatment options, linking to peer reviewed studies that have been curated by MSK. Watson for Oncology also provides a large corpus of medical literature for a physician to consider, drawing on more than 300 medical journals, more than 200 textbooks, and nearly 15 million pages of text to provide insights about different treatment options.
“Oncologists around the world rely on MOSAIQ to support the treatment pathway, and we are eager to extend Watson for Oncology to more physicians and patients globally through Elekta’s sophisticated digital oncology solutions,” says Lisa Rometty, vice president of oncology and life sciences, IBM Watson Health. “We are proud to bring the evidence based clinical decision support of Watson for Oncology together with Elekta’s extensive expertise in the oncology electronic health recrod and radiation therapy field.”
