IBM, Novo Nordisk Collaborate On Watson-Based Diabetes Care
Novo Nordisk and IBM are looking to combine Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities with diabetes research by collecting and analyzing real-time data from patients using Novo Nordisk treatments and devices. This is Watson’s latest collaboration aimed at uncovering new insights that could lead to improved solutions for diabetes management.
As medical devices have become “smarter,” researchers have been looking for ways to harness the unprecedented amount of data available for collection, and have been reaching out to tech giants for their expertise in analytics. The secret to unlocking healthcare’s toughest challenges — say experts — is in the data, if you know how to break it down.
In September, IBM launched IBM Watson Health aiming to pull data from a variety of different devices and apps and house it in a secure, cloud-based platform. John E. Kelly, IBM senior vice president, said in a statement that the company’s goal was to create a “vast ecosystem” of partnerships that could share information and drive change.
Jakob Riis, executive VP at Novo Nordisk, commented in a statement that collaborating with Watson allowed his company to explore opportunities in an “increasingly digitalized healthcare system” to make a break-through in diabetes.
“There are a lot of routine issues around judgements of dosing and the whole interplay between food intake, exercise and insulin that could be better handled by artificial intelligence (AI) that can draw on a much broader source of data. That is what computers typically do well,” Riis told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
In addition to data collected from patients currently using Novo Nordisk products, WSJ reported that the project will also analyze over 50 million U.S. medical records — stripped of personal identifying information — held by IBM Watson Health.
According to Riis, real-time data on the efficacy of Novo Nordisk drugs would also help strengthen its negotiations with insurance companies.
Deborah DiSanzo, GM of IBM Watson Health and former CEO of Phillips, said IBM was looking forward to working with Novo Nordisk to develop e-solutions for personalizing diabetes care. Though exact terms of the deal were not discussed, Bloomberg reported that Watson is the fastest growing segment of IBM’s analytics business, representing $17 billion in sales.
Novo Nordisk represents Watson’s second high-profile partnership aimed at diabetes management. Medtronic was one of the first companies — along with J&J and Apple — to partner with the newly formed IBM health unit.
“Devices alone cannot transform diabetes care,” said Hooman Hakami, executive VP and president of Diabetes Group at Medtronic, in a statement last September. “The combination of leadership technologies, big data, informatics, and world-class patient management are all required to drive effective results in diabetes care.”
Earlier this year, Verily — formerly known as Google Life Sciences — partnered with Sanofi on a similar endeavor to bring big data analytics to next-generation diabetes management.
The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimates that 387 million people are living with diabetes worldwide and expects that number to jump to 592 million by 2035.