NEW JERSEY: Celgene partners with IBM Watson Health to co-develop IBM Watson and add new capabilities in pharmacovigilance methods for preventing the adverse effects of marketed medicines. The joint offering monitors and accesses the harmful effects of drug reactions for promoting drugs safety in the pharmaceuticals companies.

“Pharmacovigilance” is the process of preventing adverse effects of marketed medicines during the development stage and its lifecycle. It collects and analyzes various reports required for creating the appropriate structure needed for drugs safety.

Watson for Patient Safety

The cognitive capabilities of IBM Watson provide evidence-based insights enabling pharmaceuticals companies to understand the safety profiles of drug products. It analyzes high volumes of data from various sources such as electronic medical records, medical claims databases and other healthcare information sources and offers an automated drug-safety system for Patient Safety.

"With this collaboration, we intend to create a paradigm shift in identifying patient safety data that we hope can be applied across the entire product lifecycle – from early development through to approved medicines," says John Freeman, MSc, JD, Corporate Vice President of Global Drug Safety and Risk Management for Celgene. "The new offering we are co-developing will bring the cognitive computing power of Watson and its growing view of clinical, research and social health data to bear on this critical healthcare challenge."

The joint venture will add Watson’s cognitive computing with Celgene’s rich experience in risk management to create a result oriented safety decision support system for life science companies. The self-learning capability of Watson helps the healthcare centres to identify the necessary drug safety signals for Patient Safety.

The partnership enables biopharmaceutical companies to manage and explain large volumes of Individual Case Safety Reports (ICSRs) that helps to bring out the possible side effects of drug products. These reports tend to increase as the data sources grow and regulations changes with time continuously.