Medical information is now doubling every two to five years, and the average person is expected to generate more than one million gigabytes of health-related data in their lifetime. This is driving the dawn of a new era of computing, where cognitive computing systems like Watson mine these data streams, understand complex questions posed in natural language and respond with evidence-based answers, predict outcomes and learn more with each interaction. Cognitive computing is enabling the dismantling of barriers between data, people and communities of care, and encouraging increased collaboration among researchers, health-care providers and technology experts. This paradigm is what's behind our vision for the recently announced collaboration with Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS). Together we're creating a new centre in downtown Hamilton focused on health-care innovation.

Teams from both organizations will soon move into what used to be a Stelco office building that's located in the downtown core. "We're re-inventing Hamilton through healthcare," said Dino Trevisani, president of IBM Canada, who is himself originally from Hamilton. "We're going to make this a centre of excellence in Canada and for the world." Trevisani spoke at a well-attended event, held at Hamilton Health Sciences, to publicize the announcement. Significantly, researchers at the new collaboration centre will be the first in Canada to make extensive use of IBM's Watson artificial intelligence software for healthcare.