GE, Partners have a plan to bring more A.I. technology to health care - The Boston Globe

Two big Boston institutions, General Electric Co. and Partners HealthCare, on Wednesday launched an ambitious initiative to employ artificial intelligence to improve medical care. The decade-long effort will include clinical and technology experts at the Partners-owned Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals working alongside engineers and developers at GE. The companies will begin by building software to help doctors more quickly and accurately interpret medical images, but over time, they also want to create applications for genomics, population health, and other areas of medicine. Artificial intelligence -- also called machine learning technology -- refers to computers that can sift through vast amounts of data to recognize patterns, becoming more accurate over time. Executives from GE, one of the nation's largest corporations, and Partners, Massachusetts' biggest nonprofit hospital network, said such technology has the potential to help care providers do their jobs more efficiently so that patients receive more accurate diagnoses and better treatments.