Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin has joined the IBM Watson Health medical imaging collaborative, a group of organizations around the world that now numbers 24 providing health and anonymous patient data to help train a Watson Health imaging system that uses artificial intelligence to diagnose and predict certain diseases.
Froedtert & MCW joined the group, along with seven other institutions: the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia health System, Pacific Radiology Group, PrivaCors, Strategic Radiology, Sutter Health and IDx LLC.
The member groups will provide a wide range of health data from around the world to the IBM Watson Imaging Clinical Review, a cognitive imaging system.
“The medical imaging collaborative is vital to Watson’s ongoing training and the development of cognitive imaging solutions to address the world’s pressing health challenges,” said Anne Le Grand, vice president of Imaging for Watson Health, in a statement announcing the additions to the collaborative.
The Watson Imaging Clinical Review analyzes the texts of medical reports and combines the information with data from a variety of other sources to flag high-risk patients.
“Our participation in the Watson Health collaborative is another step in our relationship with IBM Watson to leverage artificial intelligence technology to improve health care for our community.,” Said Froedtert & MCW spokesperson Kathy Sieja. “Artificial intelligence can be a tool to help address the shortage of healthcare providers by augmenting the work of clinicians, respond to the growing population of patients as baby boomers age, and reduce the cost of care.”
Editor’s note: this article has been updated to correct Froedtert & MCW’s role in the IBM Watson Health medical imaging collaborative. Froedtert & MCW will not directly test the technology, but will provide data that will help train the AI program to quickly assess a patient’s entire medical history and offer potential diagnoses.
