– Swiss healthcare provider Hôpitaux Universitaires Genève (HUG) becomes the first European university hospital to use IBM Watson for Genomics.
– IBM Watson for Genomics leverages AI to provide expertly validated, up-to-date, comprehensive content to enable clinical reporting & precision oncology programs.
– The HUG is Switzerland’s leading center for influenza and emerging viral infections, as well as for childhood liver disease and pediatric liver transplantation.
Hôpitaux Universitaires Genève (HUG) – the largest healthcare provider in Switzerland announced that HUG will become the first European university hospital to use the IBM Watson Health’s precision oncology offering, Watson for Genomics®, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that enables oncologists to provide patients with more personalized, evidence-based cancer care.
Personalized Oncology Care
Using information extracted from peer-reviewed articles and validated by experts, Watson for Genomics® produces a report for physicians classifying genetic alterations in a patient’s tumor and providing associated therapies and clinical trials for the actionable ones. The HUG is Switzerland’s leading center for influenza and emerging viral infections, as well as for childhood liver disease and pediatric liver transplantation. By implementing this tool, physicians at HUG will be able to more quickly performed analysis of the whole gene and RNA-sequencing results in ten minutes compared to what previously would have taken 160 hours of manual interpretation.
Key features of Watson for Genomics include
Expertly validated, up-to-date and comprehensive content: Provides variant information and clinical content that is up-to-date — based on the latest approved therapeutic options including targeted and immunotherapy options, professional guidelines, biomarker-based clinical trial options, genomic databases, and relevant publications.
Scalable SaaS Service: Watson for Genomics allows scalability for large sample volumes, achieved through a ready to use model with API access to batch upload cases and download results.
Clearly-Defined Level of Evidence Model: Identified therapeutic options associated with each alteration are supported by a drug overview, the mechanism of action and rationale for the association in a clearly defined level of evidence model.
Ingests diverse inputs: Watson for Genomics provides comprehensive interpretation across cancer types and supports all gene panel sizes including whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing.
The Bigger Picture
With 18 million diagnoses each year, cancer has a heavy human toll, as well as a high health system cost. Patients can face exhausting, lengthy and confusing treatment regimens, while oncologists are responsible for staying up to date on an ever-growing body of medical literature and genomic data to identify the best care plan for each individual patient.
“As the first European hospital to adopt Watson for Genomics® we will further help our physicians provide more personalized cancer care and streamline variability for genomic reporting, which we believe may improve outcomes for our patients,” said Rudolph Meyer, Deputy Chief Information Officer, HUG. “We remain very committed to the fight against cancer, including utilizing the best technological advances in medicine, such as AI, and participating in ongoing, quality academic research.