Early experience with IBM Watson for Oncology (WFO) cognitive computing system for lung and colorectal cancer treatment.

Abstract

8527 Background: IBM Watson for Oncology is an artificial intelligence cognitive computing system that provides confidence-ranked, evidence-based treatment recommendations for cancer. In the present study, we examine the level of agreement for lung and colorectal cancer therapy between the multidisciplinary tumour board from Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Bangalore, India, and Watson for Oncology. Methods: Watson for Oncology is a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA) trained cognitive computing system that uses natural language processing and machine learning to provide treatment recommendations. It processes structured and unstructured data from medical literature, treatment guidelines, medical records, imaging, lab and pathology reports, and the expertise of Memorial Sloan Kettering experts to formulate therapeutic recommendations. Treatment recommendations are provided in three categories: recommended, for consideration and not recommended. In this report we provide the results of the independent and blinded evaluation by the multidisciplinary tumour board and Watson for Oncology of 362 total cancer cases comprised of 112 lung, 126 colon and 124 rectal cancers seen at the Centre within the last three years. The recommendations of the two agents were compared for agreement and considered concordant when the tumour board recommendation was included in the recommended or for consideration categories of the treatment advisor. Results: Overall, treatment recommendations were concordant in 96.4% of lung, 81.0% of colon and 92.7% of rectal cancer cases. By tumour stage, treatment recommendations were concordant in 88.9% of localized and 97.9% of metastatic lung cancer, 85.5% of localized and 76.6% of metastatic colon cancer, and 96.8% of localized and 80.6% of metastatic rectal cancer. Conclusions: Treatment recommendations made by the Manipal multidisciplinary tumour board and Watson for Oncology were highly concordant in the cancers examined. This cognitive computing technology holds much promise in helping oncologists make information intensive, evidence based treatment decisions.

Concordance Between Watson for Oncology and a Multidisciplinary Clinical Decision-Making Team for Gastric Cancer and the Prognostic Implications: Retrospective Study

“…This study showed that the overall concordance of WFO and the MDT was 54.5%. Although the concordance was lower than that in published studies on breast cancer [6], lung cancer [8], and advanced gastric cancer from South Korea [11], our finding is similar to the concordance of 49% in gastric cancer identified in a gastrointestinal cancer study reported at the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting [10].…”

“…There have been related reports on breast cancer [6][7][8], lung cancer [7][8][9], colorectal cancer [10], and other cancers, which have demonstrated high concordance between WFO and MDTs. However, research on gastric cancer has been limited so far.…”

Concordance Study Between IBM Watson for Oncology and Clinical Practice for Patients with Cancer in China

“…At present, Watson for Oncology has been applied in 14 countries worldwide, including China, the U.S., Holland, Thailand, India, Korea, Poland, Slovakia, and Bangladesh. In a double‐blind study involving 362 patients of Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre in India, treatment recommendations from WFO had a high degree of consistency with the Centres multidisciplinary tumor board .…”

<p>Comparative review of drug–drug interactions with epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors for the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer</p>

“…“Cancer Drug Interactions” (https://cancer-druginteractions.org/), which is endorsed by the British Oncology Pharmacy Association, allows users to select from a list of anticancer drugs and commonly prescribed concomitant medications and obtain information on whether a DDI is likely, together with the rationale and quality of evidence. Watson for Oncology (https://www.ibm.com/watson/health/oncology-and-genomics/oncology/) is an artificial intelligence system that extracts data from medical records and provides evidence-based treatment options tailored to the individual patient 142,143. Lexicomp Online (http://www.lexi.com) and Micromedex 2.0 (http://micromedex.com) both include interactive tools for evaluation of drug interactions 144.…”