A First in Cancer Care: IBM Watson Will Help Oncologists at Jupiter Medical Center

Watson, the cognitive computing system that beat the best players on the game show Jeopardy in 2011, is now being used to make decisions about how to treat cancer patients in our community. Jupiter Medical Center is the first regional medical center in the U.S. to adopt Watson for Oncology, and its cancer experts are now using the technology to help them deliver personalized, evidence-based cancer treatment.

This is exciting news for those who live and work in Palm Beach North and surrounding communities alike. “It’s like getting a second opinion from the world’s best brain,” explains Abraham Schwarzberg, MD, Chief of Oncology at Jupiter Medical Center. “Watson for Oncology is a cognitive computing system that is programmed to try to figure out the best recipe or optimal regimen for an individual’s cancer treatment.”

In the U.S., there will be an estimated 1.7 million new cancer cases this year, with 125,000 in Florida alone. As health care providers seek to enable data-driven, evidence-based cancer care, an explosion of medical information has created both challenges and opportunities to improve quality care. Currently, there are approximately 50,000 oncology research papers published annually and by 2020, medical information is projected to double every 73 days, outpacing the ability of humans to keep up with the proliferation of medical knowledge.

Watson for Oncology can quickly:

• Analyze an individual patient’s medical information
• Read the vast and expanding body of medical literature, including millions of pages of medical journals and textbooks
• Cross-reference cancer guidelines to provide personalized, evidence-based treatment recommendations to Jupiter Medical Center cancer experts

To learn more, call Jupiter Medical Center’s oncology nurse navigator at 561-263-4269.