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IBM nurtures biological growth

Karen Southwick CNET News.com

Published: 01 Jun 2004 11:55 BST

Clinical trials
Similarly, UCSF and IBM embarked on a three-year effort in 2003 to link the university's clinical information and research findings to help accelerate medical research on Alzheimer's and other neurological illnesses.

IBM is seeking to develop an advanced clinical and genomic information program, allowing scientists from different disciplines to work with physicians in discovering genetic links implicating in their patients' diseases. They face the twin challenges of giving physicians an easy-to-use Web-based system to find this information and protecting the security of patient data.

To that end, IBM in February announced a $250m health care initiative aimed at developing consulting practices, information resources and customised industry solutions to help hospitals identify "best practices." The effort includes partnerships with Duke and the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Centre at the University of South Florida.

At Duke, an "on-demand information management system" will integrate clinical data, such as patient records and lab tests, with genetic research to pinpoint better treatments for individuals. Moffitt researchers, meanwhile, are working with IBM to screen patients at risk for cancer and help place them in clinical trials. The first target is lung cancer, one of the deadliest and most widespread cancers.

IBM's customer base extends beyond academic facilities. One longtime customer is Novant Health, which operates eight hospitals in Charlotte and Winston-Salem, N.C. "We use IBM technology in just about everything we do," said Toni Kourey, Novant's senior vice president and CIO.

In fact, she just ordered three new mainframes at a cost of $7.1m. Novant has IBM desktops, servers and workstations, running RISC, AIS and Linux, among other operating systems. Also, Novant is in the complex process of relocating its data centre, and IBM has had an engineer on site for almost the whole time.

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