In the U.S., 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 in women will develop cancer over the course of their lifetimes.

That sobering statistic comes direct from the American Cancer Society, a non-profit organization with roughly a century-worth of data on the disease. Now it’s finally taking that data, some 14,000 pages on 70 different cancer topics, as well as risks, treatments and prevention and pouring it into one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence engines: IBM Watson.

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Cancer care and research is changing on almost a daily basis. “It’s humanly impossible for any doctor to know all this information,” said IBM’s Chief Health Officer Dr. Kyu Rhee told Mashable.

Even in his own practice, Dr. Rhee, who is an internist and pediatrician by training, would have turned to the ACS’s information, manually searched and printed out relevant pieces for cancer patients to take with them.

With this new partnership, though, care givers will eventually be able to prescribe an app that can give personalized, cancer care insights on their tablets and smartphones.

“What’s really exciting about this is to leverage the expertise of ACS and extraordinary knowledge of people there and apply cognitive computing and ability to predict, personalize and promote health. Not just reacting, but being proactive,” Dr. Rhee said.

Dr. Kyu Rhe Image: IBM

Perhaps the greatest benefit of this cognitive, mobile cancer adviser will be its availability. Dr. Rhee noted that he might see patients a few times a year, but they have an almost constant stream of questions and very real concerns about their conditions. "I see people one-to-two hours a year. The remaining time, people are out in the community... To have a trusted adviser that can help people and care givers, it's and extraordinary and powerful tool," Dr. Rhee said.

A learning tool

IBM hopes doctors can integrate the forthcoming tool with Watson for Oncology for Doctors, a clinical tool practitioners are already using to help support some of their cancer treatments.

"This partnership can take [our] efforts to next level by combining the depth and breadth of cancer information from the world's most trusted cancer source with the power of cognitive technology from IBM Watson. It’s about providing the right information to the right people at the right time,” American Cancer Society CEO Gary M. Reedy said in a release.

In addition to the ACS data, Watson will learn from personalized patient data and ACS's localized treatment advice. The goal is to have the mobile app offer up insights on treatment options, local social service support systems and even on the needs of care-givers.

However, while the foundation of this app is the ACS data, Dr. Rhee told Mashable, he can foresee even more granular patient customization based, perhaps, on input from third-party connected devices.

A breast cancer patient dealing with post-chemo nausea, for example, might be using a Bluetooth-connected scale that could deliver weight fluctuations to the app, which could then, based on her personalized data and Watson’s learnings from other similar case data flowing into the system, recommend a dietary regimen that could help her maintain her weight. “Addressing that challenge is definitely something that [in the future] could be part to of customization and personalization,” said Dr. Rhee.

IBM and the American Cancer Society have yet to name the new app, which, for now, they call a “virtual cancer health adviser,” and couldn’t tell us when it will first arrive in oncologist offices.

“We’re gonna work on this very quickly,” said Dr. Rhee, but “we’re not sure when it will be available.”

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