Cleveland Clinic and IBM Launch 10-year Partnership

On Tuesday, Cleveland Clinic announced a decade-long partnership with IBM. The partnership was designed to harness the power of quantum computing for next-generation medical research. Their joint launch of the new Discovery Accelerator aims to expand healthcare and life science research’s speed and scope. The hope is to uncover innovative approaches to public health emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic.

The key to the new collaboration is installing the first private-sector, on-premise IBM Quantum System One in the United States. Apart from that the on-campus deployment, Big Blue will also install another next-gen 1000 plus qubit quantum system by 2023. More than 20 other IBM quantum systems will have clinics with cloud access.

Cloud computing’s power enables significant advances in data-intensive research areas like genomics, population health, single-cell transcriptions, and drug discovery. It also facilitates the faster development of an array of clinical applications. Cleveland Clinic says that the Discovery Accelerator will provide a technology foundation for the new Global Center for Pathogen Research and Human Health.

The health system and its partners at IBM hope to harness quantum computing together. Hybrid cloud technologies and artificial intelligence will enable faster gains from leading-edge innovations such as deep search, generative models, quantum-enriched simulation, and cloud-based AI-driven independent labs.

Among the several other IBM technologies made available to Cleveland Clinic is RoboRXN. It is a cloud platform that helps scientists synthesize new molecules remotely with robots and AI algorithms. It also helps the cloud-based IBM Functional Genomics Platform, designed to speed the discovery of molecular targets required for drug designs.