Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin Cancer Network will employ IBM Watson’s cognitive computing skills to help match cancer patients with clinical trials.
Froedtert and MCW Cancer Network is the first in Wisconsin, and among the first cancer programs in the nation, to use Watson for this purpose.
Though clinical trials provide key medical evidence for developing new treatment options for the 13.8 million Americans battling cancer today, finding and enrolling eligible patients in clinical trials has proven difficult.
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Less than 5 percent of cancer patients are participating in a trial today.
A recent survey of more than 2,000 Americans, including nearly 600 doctors, conducted on behalf of Memorial Sloan Kettering, 40 percent indicated they have a positive overall impression of clinical trials, and only 35 percent said they were likely to enroll in one.
Watson for Clinical Trial Matching is programmed to sift through the data quickly, cutting the time it would otherwise take to match patients to the right clinical trials and to provide doctors with relevant information about a patient’s eligibility for a specific trial, IBM execs said.
“Clinical trials are at the heart of all medical advances to find new ways to prevent, detect and treat cancer,” James Thomas, MD, oncologist and medical director at Froedtert and MCW Cancer Clinical Trials Office and Translational Research Unit, said in a statement. “However, no two people and no two cancers are alike.”
As Thomas, who is also a professor of hematology-oncology at MCW, sees it, Watson will support a higher level of personalized care by enabling MWC to securely connect individual health information with a vast array of clinical trials and do so with a high degree of precision.
Enrolling participants in trials is often challenging, Thomas noted. For example, a clinical trial for a new breast cancer treatment could require more than 100 patients who meet specific criteria, such as a certain genetic marker, age range, tumor stage or treatment history. Today, trial matching involves painstaking reviews by clinical coordinators who sort through detailed patient records and conditions to match the requirements of a given study protocol. On average, protocols detail 46 requirements.
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Froedtert and MCW physicians and researchers conducted 220 cancer clinical trials in 2015. In addition, according to clinicaltrials.gov, an international registry of clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health, approximately 53,000 cancer clinical trials are underway nationally at any given time.
At Froedtert and MCW, IBM will roll out a version of Watson for Clinical Trial Matching, tailored to the needs of for the Froedtert & MCW Cancer Network.
IBM announced the engagement on Thursday; the program is poised to begin next fall.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
