IBM's AI platform to help doctors diagnose cancer in N China

IBM's artificial intelligence platform Watson in February will start to assist doctors at a North China general hospital who are offering people diagnosed with cancer a precise treatment.

Tianjin Third Central Hospital has invested 3 million yuan ($434,693) to realize the whole system, which analyze both patient records and worldwide medical literature then create a list of potential treatments ranked in practicability.

"To trawl through amounts of medical data from our patients, Watson will offer treatments that target Chinese patients' cancer-causing genetic mutations specifically in the future," said Wang Fengmei, the hospital's vice president.

"In the meantime, our doctors can learn from each case it examines," she added.

Doctors from the hospital have been trained to use the platform and will give a free trial to 50 patients on Feb 4.

"I think doctors with less experience would benefit the most from this electronic companion in clinical trials. You can consider Watson as a dictionary, a Wikipedia with large, accurate information anytime anywhere," said Dr Wu Chenxuan of the hospital.

"However, Watson will never be the final answer to cancer treatment. There are so many factors need to be concluded such as the patients' emotion, and economic conditions," she added.

The American-born Watson has been transferred into Chinese, and its multidisciplinary team (MDT) platform was run by Ewell Technology, one of Tianjin Third Central Hospital's partners, which has a team to synchronously translate constantly updated information and manage the backstage system.

"So far, the accuracy of translation is above 85 percent, and 5 more percent will be added in the near future," said Jiang Haiying, Regional Sales Director of Ewell.

More Chinese patients are starting to get help from Watson. It was firstly brought into China by Zhejiang Province Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in December last year and will be used by 19 other hospitals in China soon according to 36kr.com.

"Even though we have no figure to support how Watson will change Chinese oncology so far, we have faith that it will shorten the gap between China and developed countries," said Wang.

The survival rate of cancer patients who live 5 years after treatment in the US is 66 percent, and the rate in China is 30.9 percent. One of the most important reasons lies in the lack of information in the diagnosis section, she believed.