Guerbet and IBM Watson Health to Jointly Develop AI Software

Guerbet (Villepinte, France), which specializes in contrast agents and solutions for diagnostic and interventional medical imaging, has signed an agreement with IBM Watson Health (Cambridge, MA, USA) to jointly develop an artificial intelligence (AI) software solution for supporting liver cancer diagnostics and care.

Guerbet offers a comprehensive range of pharmaceutical products, medical devices and services for diagnostic and interventional imaging, to improve the diagnosis and treatment of patients. Watson Health is a business unit of IBM dedicated to the development and implementation of AI and data-driven technologies to tackle a wide range of the biggest healthcare challenges, including cancer, diabetes, drug discovery and more. Both the companies plan to co-develop innovative, clinical decision support solutions.

The first, called Watson Imaging Care Advisor for Liver, is planned to be a diagnostic support tool that will use AI to automate the detection, staging, tracking, monitoring, therapy prediction and therapy response of primary and secondary liver cancer for clinicians. Care Advisor for Liver will be designed to be compatible with the most common PACS visualization systems, making it easy to be integrated directly into the workflows of healthcare professionals.

Watson Imaging Care Advisor for Liver will be a part of a family of decision support tools powered by IBM Watson image analytics designed to inform radiologists' diagnostic decisions for their patients. These offerings are being developed with a shared objective to create insights derived from IBM Watson image analytics to help inform clinical decisions. The IBM Research team will also work on developing solutions leveraging prior research innovations.

"Liver cancer is a growing health concern globally, and the use of augmented intelligence by medical imaging is well-positioned to help address it," said Yves L'Epine, Guerbet's CEO. "We are proud to work with IBM Watson Health to develop a solution dedicated to liver disease, which could help make it possible for clinicians to make more informed characterizations of tissue without recourse to biopsy."

"We look forward to working with IBM Watson Health on Guerbet's first project aimed at better assisting radiologists with augmented intelligence," said François Nicolas, Chief Digital Officer at Guerbet. "This will help us grow our capabilities in AI to enable innovative solutions improving care pathways."

"Imaging is a critical area of healthcare where we believe artificial intelligence can be used to expand the physician's view so they can be more informed in their diagnostic and treatment decisions for their patients," said Anne Le Grand, Vice President of Imaging at Watson Health. "We are excited to bring together the significant respective expertise of IBM and Guerbet to advance innovation in this important field and ultimately help combat the challenge of liver cancer globally."