IBM will continue its longtime collaboration with speech-recognition
software developer Nuance Communications to bring the analytics capabilities of
supercomputer Watson into the health care field. Under a research agreement
announced Feb. 17, Nuance will feed its CLU (Clinical Language Understanding)
applications into IBM’s Watson hardware.
Nuance makes the Dragon speech-recognition software.
Meanwhile, IBM will incorporate its own Deep Question Answering
(QA), Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning capabilities
into the supercomputer.
Combining the CLU language capabilities of Nuance in a supercomputer
such as Watson could lead to the next generation of EHRs (electronic
health records) and
decision-support applications, according to Dr. Eliot Siegel, director
of the
Maryland Imaging Research Technologies Laboratory (MIRTL) at the UMD
School of Medicine. "We believe that this has the potential to usher in
a new era of computer-assisted personalized medicine into health care
to improve diagnostic
accuracy, efficiency and patient safety," Siegel said in a statement.
A commercial product will be available in 18 to 24 months, IBM and Nuance report.
Columbia University Medical Center and UMD (University of Maryland)
School of Medicine will contribute medical expertise that will enable
Watson to work effectively in
health care.
For more, read the eWeek article: IBM, Nuance to Tune Watson Supercomputer for Use in Health Care.