Celgene engages IBM Watson for patient safety work

Celgene has teamed up with IBM Watson Health to improve its existing pharmacovigilance methods through the creation of a new cloud-based drug evaluation platform.

Built using the Watson Health Cloud supercomputer, the new system will collect patient data to assess, monitor and report adverse drug reactions.

IBM says the high volumes of data will be obtained from “diverse sources, including anonymised electronic medical records, medical claims databases and other healthcare information sources”.

'Watson for Patient Safety' aims to aid life sciences companies in managing and interpreting Individual Case Safety Reports (ICSRs), using its trademark cognitive computing technology to increasingly identify potential drug safety signals.

The partners hope this will reduce the time and monetary drain of failed late-stage clinical trials for drug developers through access to such comprehensive outcome- and evidence-based profiling, ultimately getting drugs to market faster.

John Freeman, Celgene's corporate vice president of global drug safety and risk management, said: “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 to approved medicines.

“The new offering we are co-developing will bring the cognitive computing power of Watson and its growing view of clinical, research and social health data to bear on this critical healthcare challenge.”

Due to be developed across several phases, the first module of 'Watson for Patient Safety' is expected to be ready within the next year.

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