Anyone who enjoys watching the quiz show Jeopardy! has heard about the computer system Watson, which was initially developed to compete on the show but has since garnered the attention of leaders across a variety of industries. Watson can even be used to better analyze EHR patient data and lead to improved quality of care.
The company division IBM Watson Health has announced today that it is working with Epic and the Mayo Clinic to apply some of the computing capabilities of Watson to analyzing EHR patient data and systems in order to boost patient health outcomes. Providers will also gain advantages when applying Watson’s power to EHRs and gaining faster analysis of the many issues that affect a patient’s health and wellness.EHR Patient Data
Using secure, cloud-based Watson services will help physicians with clinical decision making and understanding of patients’ medical conditions. Over the last year, Epic has exchanged more than 80 million patient health records within its community and outside of it.
“Building on our recent announcement of IBM Watson Health, we are collaborating with Epic and Mayo Clinic in another important validation of the potential of Watson to be used broadly across the healthcare industry,” Mike Rhodin, Senior Vice President of IBM Watson, remarked in a public statement. “This is just the first step in our vision to bring more personalized care to individual patients by connecting traditional sources of patient information with the growing pools of dynamic and constantly growing healthcare information.”
The hope is to have Watson and Epic software be utilized to effectively create patient treatment protocols and more customized health management solutions for patients with chronic conditions. Watson would be used to bring forth relevant case studies and medical knowledge that is applicable to treating a patient when doctors and other healthcare professionals share EHR patient data with Watson in real-time.
Epic will be incorporating Watson’s computing features into its clinical decision support tools including Health Level -7 (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Through this combined system, clinicians will be able to more quickly access the knowledge necessary to more effectively treat patients and improve health outcomes.
IBM and Mayo Clinic is collaborating on ways to revolutionize cognitive computing by applying it to clinical trials matching among cancer patients. With the streamlined and accurate processes available through Watson’s computing capabilities, physicians are able to register patients much faster in relevant clinical trials that are customized to each individual’s needs. With more than 1 million patients seen at the Mayo Clinic every year and more than 1,000 clinical trials available year-round, integrating Watson should lead to significant progress in quickly assigning patients to innovative studies.
“Patients need answers, and Watson helps provide them quickly and more thoroughly. We are excited by Watson’s potential to efficiently provide clinical trials information at the point of care,” Dr. Steven Alberts, an oncologist at Mayo Clinic, said in a public statement.
IBM’s Watson offers significant opportunity for healthcare providers to bring about high-quality care through the use of cognitive computing capabilities tailored to each individual patient.

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