As Digital Journal has recently reported Microsoft has recently launched Healthcare NeXT, which is a cloud-based, artificial intelligence and research project with the aim of fostering digital tools to encourage people to lead healthier lives as well as offering analytics to support healthcare research. Microsoft's biological computation laboratories approach is similar to the approach taken by IBM with its Watson system, according to PharmaPhorum. This involves applying machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities to analyze complex biological data. These Industry 4.0 solutions represent a new and potentially successful input into healthcare research. Part of the research that Microsoft is undertaking is into cancer.

Four out of 10--that's how many Americans the National Cancer Institute estimates will be diagnosed with cancer at some point. While 33 percent of those patients won't live longer than five years, giving them precious little time to find effective treatments, it takes over a decade to bring new cancer drugs to market. The process involves animal testing, human trials and regulatory review--a gantlet through which less than 7 percent of experimental medicines successfully pass. Is it any wonder, then, that there are less than 2,000 Food and Drug Administration-approved pharmaceuticals on the market? Insilico Medicine, a Baltimore-based biotech research company, hopes to revolutionize drug development by slashing the time necessary for research with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). In a study published in the medical journal Oncotarget, a team led by Insilico Medicine details their approach.