New service from IBM Watson will help scientists work more efficiently

IBM has introduced a new addition to the cognitive capabilities of IBM Watson, which allows researchers to accelerate the pace of research by finding previously unknown connections in analyzing big data.

The new service IBM Watson Discovery Advisor is available in the cloud environment and is designed to help scientists in their work on research. The service reduces the time required to confirm the hypotheses and formulate conclusions from months to days and from days to hours, opening up new opportunities for researchers and developers.
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Based on IBM Watson’s ability to understand natural languages, the Watson Discovery Advisor understands the language of science in the same way, for example, how chemical elements interact, and provides specialists with a full-featured tool for conducting research in the biological sciences and other fields.

Scientists from leading academic, pharmaceutical and other commercial research centers are already using the new service to analyze and confirm hypotheses in a short time, using data from open sources. A new study is published daily every 30 seconds. In turn, about one million scientific works are published annually (source: CiteSeer *). According to the National Institute of Health of the United States, the average researcher reads about 23 scientific papers per month, or about 300 per year. This means that it is physically impossible to completely cope with the growing amount of scientific work.

In 2013, 1,000 leading research and development companies spent more than 600 billion US dollars on research (source: Strategy &). If we take as an example the full cycle of the development of a pharmaceutical product, research is progressing rather slowly, taking on average 10 to 15 years (source: Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America). Using the Watson Discovery Advisor, scientists can find new or previously unrevealed connections among the scattered data, which can potentially significantly accelerate the pace of scientific research.

“We are on the verge of a new era of scientific discoveries based on big data,” said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson Group. - Watson Discovery Advisor is a logical addition to the existing cognitive capabilities of the Watson supercomputer. We offer the industry a powerful tool that will help increase the effect of investment in research and development, eventually leading to new important discoveries. ”

Leading research organizations, including the Baylor College of Medicine, Johnson & Johnson, and the Center for Genome Research in New York, are already starting to use the Watson Discovery Advisor to accelerate the development of research projects.

• According to a joint study by Baylor College of Medicine and IBM , scientists have demonstrated a new opportunity to raise questions that may be useful in the context of the long-term development of new effective treatments for diseases. Within a few weeks, biologists and data processing specialists using the Baylor Knowledge Integration Toolkit (KnIT), based on the Watson technology, with high accuracy, identified proteins that modify p53 - an important protein that directly affects the progression of cancer. This discovery can help accelerate the development and increase the effectiveness of medicines and drugs. Otherwise, this study could take several years. Watson's technology helped analyze 70,000 research papers to identify proteins that affect p53 activity. Automated information analysis allowed researchers to identify six proteins for the next study. This marks a significant breakthrough, because in the past 30 years, scientists have been able to cope with the study of only one protein per year.

“On average, one scientist can read from one to five studies a day,” said Dr. Olivier Lichtarge, a leading researcher and professor of molecular genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. - If we talk specifically about p53, then more than 70,000 scientific papers are devoted to this protein. Even if I read five studies a day, I will spend almost 38 years to completely rework all the information available today. Watson technology, in turn, has demonstrated the possibility of increasing the speed and quality of research. ”

• Johnson & Johnson collaborates with the IBM Watson Discovery Advisor development team to teach the Watson supercomputer to read and understand research papers that describe in detail the results of clinical trials of drugs. The cooperation of the two companies can influence the comparative analysis of drug efficacy, which will allow medical staff to prescribe the right means of treatment to patients, as well as minimize side effects. On average, a comparative performance analysis, done manually, requires the participation of three specialists and work for 10 months only to collect the necessary data and prepare them for analyzing the information and confirming the hypothesis. Experts Johnson & Johnson and IBM hope to teach the supercomputer to quickly extract information directly from the medical literature, allowing researchers to ask questions based on the data, in order to determine the effectiveness of treatment in comparison with the use of other drugs, as well as minimize side effects from their use.

• The IBM Watson supercomputer will support the work of analysts at the Genome Research Center in New York in the field of genomic medicine development. The attention of researchers will be focused on the clinical application of genomics in order to help oncologists to provide treatment based on the patient's DNA, patients with glioblastoma - an aggressive form of brain cancer, which kills more than 13,000 Americans each year. Despite significant breakthroughs in the study of the genetic causes of cancer, the enormous size of arrays of genomic data makes it difficult to use them to find effective treatments. Based on the results of a new clinical study in the near future, IBM Watson will help accelerate the provision of personalized treatments.



Practical use

New technologies can find application in all areas where the analysis of a large amount of information is required. Cognitive calculations will allow experts to work with vast amounts of data, including the products of the intellectual work of many experts.

Watson can be used:

- To help the developers of medicines required to save the lives of many people
- Expansion of analytical capabilities of financial consultants - Improving the strategy of attorneys for mergers and acquisitions through more comprehensive legal assessment and analysis of documents

- For the work of government analysts in areas related to security
- To create new recipes. Cooks can use Watson to create new dishes, learn the principles of cooking and food composition, as well as use a huge database of recipes with data on the compatibility of products, chemistry and kitchens of countries around the world.

The IBM Watson Discovery Advisor can transform industries and professions based on data such as law, biotechnology, education, chemistry, metal production, research, engineering, and forensic science.