A new era of cognitive computing

Rob Smith
Program Director
Software CTO team, Europe
robertl_smith@uk.ibm.com
@laserfunrob

Watson is ushering in a new era of computing

Tabulating
Systems Era

Programmable
Systems Era

Cognitive
Systems Era

1900

1950

2011

2014 International Business Machines Corporation

Cognitive systems expand the problems we can address

Programmatic Systems
Leverage traditional data sources
Follow pre-defined rules (programs)
Provide the same output to all users

Cognitive Systems
Are taught, not programmed.
Learn and improve based on experience
Interpret sensory and non-traditional
data
Relate to each of us as individuals
Allow us to expand and scale our own
thinking

Watsons intelligence and capabilities are expanding

Understands natural
language

Explores
Reasons

Generates and
evaluates hypotheses
Adapts and learns

Visualizes

2014 International Business Machines Corporation

Watson enables three classes of cognitive services

ASK

DISCOVER

DECIDE

User has a question

and answer
requirement, with
questions posed in
natural language

Seek answers and

insights from a defined
data repository (i.e.
corpus) comprised
largely of unstructured
data

Provide transparency
and supporting
evidence for
confidence weighted
responses to questions
and queries

2014 International Business Machines Corporation

Cognitive computing will transform Healthcare

Care is determined by a
proactive plan to meet health
needs, with or without visits

We measure our quality with

analytics and make rapid
changes to improve it

Care is standardized according

to evidence based guidelines
and advance cognitive systems

Engage Patients

Improve Outcomes

Control Costs in uk,

think about referrals

2014 International Business Machines Corporation

Watson Oncology: helping oncologists treat cancer patients

Attacking the cause
of one in four deaths

IBM Watson
Oncology
Built with Memorial Sloan Kettering

2014 International Business Machines Corporation

Business problem:
Need better individualized cancer treatment plans
Solution:
Suggestions to help inform oncologists decisions
based on 600K+ pieces of evidence and 2M pages of
text from 42 publications
Analyzes patient data against thousands of historical
cases and trained through 5000+ Memorial SloanKettering MD and analyst hours
Evolves with the fast-changing field

Watson Oncology is a Cognitive System that differs from

conventional programmatic systems
2
It is taught by example, not programmed. This gives it the ability to learn and adapt
as new information is presented and outcomes and actions are taken. Ground truth
is communicated through training / test cases as well as interpretation of those
cases by physicians
It generates and evaluates a set of hypothesis appropriate to the case being
presented rather than being confined to only a set of rules, or simple decision tree
logic (e.g. if this, not that), giving it a much wider range of alternatives to consider
It delivers a set of probabilistic treatment responses, which are confidence
weighted into categories
It provides the underlying rationale for its recommendations and points to evidence
that support and refute those recommendations

For physicians, Watson Oncology provides ranked treatment options

with supporting evidence rather than just listing valid guideline choices
2014 International Business Machines Corporation

Watson Oncology helps medical oncologists and their care

teams address these challenges
2

Use those attributes to

find candidate treatment
options as determined by
consulting NCCN
Guidelines

Patient Case
61 y/o woman s/p
mastectomy is here to
discuss treatment options
for a recently diagnosed
4.2 cm grade 2 infiltrating
ductal carcinoma

Guidelines

3
Search a corpus of
evidence data to find
supporting evidence for
each option

Evidence

Candidate Treatment
Options

Key Case
Attributes

Watson Oncology

Supporting
Evidence

1
Extract key attributes
from a patients case

2014 International Business Machines Corporation

Prioritized Treatment
Options
+
Evidence Profile

Inclusion / exclusion
criteria
Co morbidities
Contraindications
FDA risk factors
MSK preferred
treatments
Other guidelines
Published literature studies, reports, opinions
from Text Books,
Journals, Manuals, etc.

4
Use Watsons analytic
algorithms to prioritize
treatment options based
on best evidence.

Watson Genomics: Bridging between sequencing and personalized

medicine.
Ampli-seq panel
Gain consent

Mutation(s) identified

Whole Genome Seq

Gene expression,
Tumour Heterogeneity analysis

RNA seq
In absence of genomic
information the patient
would be a candidate
for chemotherapy or
radiation

Chemotherapy or
Radiotherapy

Case specific analysis

of mutation patterns,
copy number analysis,
differential gene
expression, DNA repair
defects, SNVs, WGSs

Cross reference against

a system that can
identify confidence
levels against treatment
regimen

No mutation

Pharma

Cancer Gene

Specific Genome

Catalogue of

Cogenomics

corpus

databases

annotated tumour
variants

Output is a highly
personalised set of
targetted treatments

Ranked list of
actionable targets
with confidence level

List of drug targets

Drug option
summarisation

On demand
evidence
retrieval

Drug
sensitivity
prediction
analysis

Patient
molecular
profile
analysis

IBM recently joined the

NYGC Consortium as the
sole Founding Technology
Member
Together IBM and NYGC will
work on applying core skills
and cognitive technologies to
rapidly ramp sequencing to
Oncologists

Bob Darnell, President, NYGC

http://www.nygenome.org/

Watson facilitating medical school problem-based learning methods

Cognitive systems in
a classroom-based
setting

WatsonPaths and
Watson EMR Assistant
Research Projects

Business problem:
Give medical students and doctors easier insight into
data to inform their diagnoses and decisions
Solution:
Intuitive, new user interface to Watsons power
revealing chains of evidence to support clinical
reasoning
Analysis of whole EMRs to extract and visually present
summarized knowledge with semantic understanding
of context

IBM Watson Engagement Advisor

What it does:

How it does it:

Transforms client engagement by

knowing, engaging and empowering clients
where they are

Answers questions and guides

users through processes with plainEnglish dialogue

Develops client relationships by reaching

out to clients who do not leverage traditional
channels

Leverages natural language to

interact with users and build
knowledge and expertise

Empowers consumers and contact center

agents to take informed action with
confidence

Utilizes evidence evaluation and

learning to provide informed and
effective responses to users

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Re-imagining medicine in 2020

Watson is changing the way medicine is:
Researched
Connecting clinicians & researchers at
MD Anderson

Taught
Students learning from Watson at the
Cleveland Clinic

Practiced
Memorial Sloan Kettering, Community
Cancer Care Centers

Paid for
WellPoint & Utilization Management

2014 International Business Machines Corporation

Delivering evidenced
based personalized
medicine

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ibmwatson.com

2014 International Business Machines Corporation

facebook.com/ibmwatson

@ibmwatson

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