International Business Machines Corp (IBM) introduced on Wednesday a new computer system called Watson Discovery Advisor.
Watson Discovery Advisor recognizes patterns and similarities in large amounts of data, and can understand and recognize various chemical compound interactions, as well as the complexities of human language. When fed massive amounts of data, the computer system can differentiate various connections in the data.
According to Reuters, the Watson Discovery Advisor is accessible through cloud service. IBM has already granted access to a few researchers and scientists in order to get their feedback on the program's ease of use and overall performance.
NBCNews reported that Johnson & Johnson is currently using the program to teach it how to read and understand the outcomes of clinical trials described in published research papers. This will help in speeding up the study on a new drug's effectiveness. French pharmaceutical company Sanofi is also using Watson to come up with other possible uses for existing drugs in the market. Meanwhile, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston is also using the technology to identify proteins that modify a protein that can help prevent cancer.
"On average, a scientist might read between one and five research papers on a good day," Dr. Olivier Lichtarge, investigator and professor of molecular and human genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine told Reuters.
Dr. Lichtarge has tested the program to assess and analyze over 70,000 articles discussing a kind of protein. He narrated that the process was very fast because without Watson, it would take him 38 years to complete the analysis.
