The Mayo Clinic will use IBM’s Watson to match colorectal, lung, and breast cancer patients with clinical trials, expediting a slow and inefficient process. 170,000 patient studies are being conducted worldwide at any given time–8,000 at the Mayo Clinic. Processing clinical trials is done manually, which involves sorting through patient records to ensure that proper matches are made. Watson could shorten the process considerably, with matches being made within seconds.

The clinic is providing Watson with information on all clinical trials at the clinic and in public databases. Because of its ability to process natural language, Watson can analyze both trial requirements and patient records.

According to project lead Dr. Nicholas LaRusso, one of the biggest challenges that physicians face is the task of managing large quantities of data. In the future, as medical lab results could include rapid “genomic analyses,” LaRusso said that technologies like Watson could “help organize and aggregate huge amounts of data” that would be impossible for a human to process efficiently. “Watson can fit into a flow of how we interact with patients, and will provide input required with diagnosis and management, and ultimately become, in my opinion, a member of the provider team.”