Precision medicine is coming. I'm very excited about these new partnerships in cancer treatment. We are entering a new age.
“It can take weeks to identify drugs targeting cancer-causing mutations. Watson can do it in minutes and has in its database the findings of scientific papers and clinical trials on particular cancers and potential therapies.”
We're not there yet, we haven't solved anything, but we're acknowledging our limitations as humans. There's far too much historical research and data, and with EHR, far more data pouring in every day. It's a potential gold mine, but we can't handle it alone. Healthcare will be a very different place in 10 years, and applications like these are going to lead the way.
“Faced with such a data deluge, “the solution is going to be Watson or something like it,” said oncologist Norman Sharpless of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center. “Humans alone can’t do it.””
It's not the end-all solution (as the article describes), but it's a step forward. It's hope.