Machine learning answers 'holy grail' questions to accelerate drug development

The service and license arrangement with GNS Healthcare (GNS) gives Celgene Corporation rights to operate the GNS Healthcare REFS (Reverse Engineering and Forward Simulation) causal machine learning and simulation platform. As part of the arrangement, several GNS causal modeling experts will be brought in-house at Celgene sites to operate the platform. Additionally, Celgene has made a second equity investment in GNS. The core GNS Healthcare technology, REFS, is "fundamentally different from all other types of machine learning approaches," said Colin Hill, CEO, chairman and co-founder of GNS Healthcare. "Causal modeling and simulation is the only type of technology capable of answering the'holy grail' questions that are necessary to better match drugs and other health interventions to individual patients and discover new pathways for intervention," he told us.