Medical data, supercomputing and personalised medical care

Could IBM’s collaboration with Apple and medical electronics companies transform the way doctors treat patients and researchers assess diseases.  IBM launched its health platform for its supercomputer Watson on the 13th April 2015.  The platform is designed to collect medical information from a wide variety of sources including iOS health apps provided by apple and devices provided by Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic.

John Kelly from IBM, said this platform will draw on ‘[health] data at a scale never before possible’.  This data could play a key role in research and development of drugs and monitoring their effects in differing demographic cohorts.  It will provide data, which wouldn’t usually be available for research purposes.

In addition to aiding behavioural and health research, doctors would be able to gain an insight into the lifestyles of patients who live in certain areas and who are of a certain age, possibly leading to more personalised medical advice and medical interventions.  They could use the power of the supercomputer Watson to create specific personalised care plans which are able to monitor and notify both the patient and the doctor about how the treatment process is going.