Microsoft this week announced new progress in its genomics collaboration with the Bar Harbor, Maine-based Jackson Laboratory. WHY IT MATTERS Jackson Lab has been using artificial intelligence tools, developed as part of Microsoft's Project Hanover, to help manage the vast amount of genomic data needed to power its precision medicine initiatives. Specifically, the technology has helped the laboratory scale up its Clinical Knowledgebase, or CKB too – a vast searchable database that helps oncologists and other healthcare experts make detailed interpretations of complex sequencing and maintain troves of leading-edge insights – drawn from thousands of cancer research papers each day – to help drive personalized treatments. The machine learning technology, which is still evolving, is increasingly able to "read" complex medical and research documents – trained to highlight important and relevant information contained within them such as new insights into genetics, drugs and patient response. That mining of disparate knowledge sources means clinicians can save hours finding and curating relevant data, targeted to specific genomic profiles.

Advances in cancer care such as immunotherapy promise greater success in treatment but also currently come with higher risks and uncertain outcomes. GE Healthcare and Vanderbilt University Medical Center are partnering to develop AI applications which will examine anonymized patient data to help physicians determine better courses of treatment. By retroactively analyzing demographic, genomic, tumor, cellular, proteomic and imaging data from anonymized patient records, these AI apps will assist clinicians in determining the best course of treatment for current and future patients. "This partnership is a great example of the increasing convergence of the tools, technologies and data used by therapy innovators and healthcare providers," said Kieran Murphy, president and CEO of GE Healthcare, in a statement. WHY IT MATTERS Because immunotherapies are expensive and have the potential to cause damage if the wrong therapy is chosen, they are still associated with increased mortalities and cost.