IBM inks patient safety pact with pharma company Celgene
IBM Watson and biopharmaceutical specialist Celgene will work together to develop IBM Watson for Patient Safety, which will run on the Watson Health Cloud.
The intent is to merge Watson’s cognitive computing skills with Celgene’s knowledge of drug safety and risk management to build a drug safety decision support system for life science companies.
Watson for Patient Safety is being developed in phases as an automated drug-safety product designed to enable the rapid collection, ordering and automated analysis of high volumes of data from a wide variety of sources, including anonymized electronic medical records, medical claims databases and other healthcare information sources.
The first module is expected within the next year.
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The goal is to help biopharmaceutical companies and other entities to better manage and interpret large volumes of individual case safety reports describing potential side effects associated with drug products.
Across the biopharmaceutical industry these reports are increasing in volume and complexity, Celgene executives assert.
“With this collaboration, we intend to create a paradigm shift in identifying patient safety data that we hope can be applied across the entire product lifecycle – from early development through to approved medicines,” John Freeman, corporate vice president of global drug safety and risk management for Celgene, said in a statement.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
