Supercomputer Watson will help fight cancer

We have repeatedly told you about the supercomputer Watson, created by IBM engineers. What roles this computer did not try on itself: he was a cook, a sales consultant and even won a game show. Not so long ago, Watson power was put into a new channel for him - he started healthcare. Now the supercomputer will help to analyze cancerous tumors in order to find and calculate for patients the most effective set of medications.

This application of the IBM supercomputer is part of the American program for the development of personalized medicine. Oncological disease is an uncontrolled cell growth that occurs as a result of a genetic mutation. The scientists found out that if they manage to identify which mutation is the cause of cancer, then this disease can be treated much more effectively.

The main problem is that when DNA sequencing is necessary to process such a huge amount of data that ordinary computers are hardly capable of such a task, and if you still consider thousands of different gene mutations, among which you must find the culprit for the onset of the disease, then here you can come to the rescue only supercomputer.

Oncologists hope that the power of Watson will help them solve the problem of huge amounts of data. A DNA snapshot will be loaded into the computer, after which it will begin to search the data received for the cause of the cancer. After the desired mutation is found, Watson will begin to sort out all possible combinations of medications with these or other medications, because thousands of results of various clinical trials and data on already approved medications have already been loaded into it. IBM programmers spent about a year preparing a supercomputer for solving similar problems.

For the time being, one thing is unclear: how many medical institutions will have to pay IBM for this kind of services and how many patients a supercomputer will be able to help, provided that its capacity is certainly not enough for everyone.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/technology/superkompyuter-watson-pomozhet-borotsya-s-onkologicheskimi-zabolevaniyami.html.