IBM, Teva Pharmaceuticals expand global partnership with Watson

IBM and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries have announced a significant expansion of their existing global e-Health alliance, with a focus on discovering new treatment options and improving chronic disease management. Both projects will run on the IBM Watson Health Cloud.

The announcement was made during a keynote session at the World of Watson conference in Las Vegas, featuring IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty, and Teva’s Chairman of the Board of Directors, Professor Yitzhak Peterburg.

The expanded partnership features a new, three-year research collaboration to develop cognitive technologies that can enable a systematic approach to the emerging field of drug repurposing. The companies also announced that respiratory and central nervous system (CNS) diseases will be the first targets for their chronic disease management initiative.

“The consumer of today expects to get everything right here, right now. We have seen this across a variety of industries, and it is happening as we speak in the healthcare industry,” said Professor Peterburg. “The patient of today wants healthcare to be affordable, convenient and transparent to their needs; if it costs too much, or involves going back and forth to the pharmacy five times, then they’re not interested. Millennials are also telling us that they would rather see their doctors virtually, so we need to adapt the way we provide healthcare in order to cater for this.”

The chronic disease management collaboration will combine cloud-connected drug delivery and app technology with more than six billion data points processed by Watson to provide actionable insights. Using Watson’s cognitive processing capabilities and newly developed algorithms, this data may be used to calculate the prospective risk of health events, such as an asthma attack, with Teva delivering that information directly to caregivers and their patients via an app or other software interface.

“Through the use of cognitive inhalers and a cloud-connected app, an asthma sufferer could get an advanced warning alert to their smartphone when they are at a high risk of an attack; this can prevent unnecessary trips to the hospitals, cut costs, and allow patients to get on with their lives,” said Professor Peterburg.

In a demonstration video played at the keynote event, attendees were shown how the partnership could involve using cognitive technology in handheld smart devices to measure glucose levels and assess a user’s current health state. If this data suggested the need for medical intervention, the app would give the user an option to call a doctor, who they could connect with via video-calling at anytime of day. The demo then showed how the doctor may prescribe the appropriate drugs for the user’s symptoms during the conversation, which would then be delivered via a 3D-pill printer directly to the patient’s home.

Peterburg concluded, “We have the opportunity to lead change in the pharmaceutical industry, innovating constantly to meet consumers’ evolving needs. By combining the skills of our partners, such as Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities, with Teva’s pharmaceutical expertise, we can create novel solutions and deliver