IBM announced the release of the Watson Discovery Advisor, which will allow researchers to use the big data processing capabilities of the Watson supercomputer to accelerate scientific research and discoveries.
Watson, famous for beating Jeopardy champions in 2011, will be powering up the cloud-based Watson Discovery Advisor tool. Watson's victory in Jeopardy demonstrated the system's ability to analyze and answer questions that are said in the natural language of humans.
IBM made the announcement in a paper reviewed by the Baylor College of Medicine, which had the school use the Watson Discovery Advisor tool to make connections within massive amounts of scientific research. Baylor was able to analyze the written abstracts of about 70,000 science research articles on a certain protein related to cancer, in an attempt to predict the other substances that could generate an interaction with it. Watson was able to identify six proteins that should be investigated, which is much more than the one protein that researchers usually discover for investigation within one whole year.
Johnson & Johnson is also using the technology to formulate new hypotheses and discover patterns in collected data for medicine development, along with discovering new uses for currently existing medicine.
"We're entering an extraordinary age of data-driven discovery," said IBM Watson Group senior vice president Mike Rhodin. "Today's announcement is a natural extension of Watson's cognitive computing capability. We're empowering researchers with a powerful tool which will help increase the impact of investments organizations make in R&D, leading to significant breakthroughs."
IBM is attempting to commercialize the Watson technology through showcasing how the system can be used in industries such as financial planning and customer service.
IBM is turning to data analysis tools such as Watson to spur growth for the company, as the decreasing demand for IBM hardware has resulted in nine consecutive quarters marked with declining sales for the company.
"We've gone from co-creating with these early partners to creating a commercial offering," said IBM Watson Group vice president John Gordon in a phone interview, referring to partners Baylor and J&J. "In the past we've talked about how Watson can help people find answers to things that are known. We are shifting to really helping innovators investigate the great problems of our time."
IBM announced the formation of the Watson Group back in January, which is a business unit within the company that will focus only on generating new uses for the famed supercomputer. IBM has since invested about $1 billion into the Watson Group, with plans of hiring 2,000 employees for the unit.
