After several months of beefing up the Watson Health Unit, IBM on Wednesday announced it has recruited 16 other entities involved in the health care sector to from a new Watson Health medical imaging collaborative. The global collaborative aims to advance cognitive imaging in a range of medical specialties, from eye care to the treatment of heart and brain disease. The group plans to use Watson to analyze previously "invisible" unstructured imaging data, found in places such as radiology and pathology reports, as well as broad swaths of data collected from sources like population-based disease registries. "There is strong potential for systems like Watson to help to make radiologists more productive, diagnoses more accurate, decisions more sound, and costs more manageable," Nadim Michel Daher, a medical imaging and informatics analyst for Frost & Sullivan, said in a statement. "This is the type of collaborative initiative needed to produce the real-world evidence and examples to advance the field of medical imaging and address patient care needs across large and growing disease states."

IBM this week announced it has created a Watson Health medical imaging collaborative, a global initiative including more than fifteen leading health care entities such as academic medical centers, ambulatory radiology providers and imaging technology companies. The collaborative aims to bring cognitive imaging into daily practice to help doctors address cancers, diabetes, eye, brain and heart diseases. Members of the collaborative intend to put Watson to work to extract insights from previously'invisible' unstructured imaging data and combine that with a variety of data from other sources. In doing so, the efforts may help doctors make personalised care decisions relevant to a specific patient while building a body of knowledge to benefit the broader patient populations. This information may include data from electronic health records, radiology and pathology reports, lab results, doctors' progress notes, medical journals, clinical care guidelines and published studies.

After several months of beefing up the Watson Health Unit, IBM on Wednesday announced it has recruited 16 other entities involved in the health care sector to from a new Watson Health medical imaging collaborative. The global collaborative aims to advance cognitive imaging in a range of medical specialties, from eye care to the treatment of heart and brain disease. The group plans to use Watson to analyze previously "invisible" unstructured imaging data, found in places such as radiology and pathology reports, as well as broad swaths of data collected from sources like population-based disease registries. "There is strong potential for systems like Watson to help to make radiologists more productive, diagnoses more accurate, decisions more sound, and costs more manageable," Nadim Michel Daher, a medical imaging and informatics analyst for Frost & Sullivan, said in a statement. "This is the type of collaborative initiative needed to produce the real-world evidence and examples to advance the field of medical imaging and address patient care needs across large and growing disease states."