KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 27): KPJ Healthcare Bhd has become the first private healthcare services provider in Malaysia to adopt the Watson for Oncology cognitive computing system trained by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre (MSK).

The IBM platform provides insights that help doctors deliver evidence-based cancer treatment options.

KPJ Healthcare president and managing director Datuk Amiruddin Abdul Satar said the service is initially being offered at five specialist hospitals — KPJ Damansara, KPJ Ampang Puteri, KPJ Johor, KPJ Ipoh and KPJ Sabah.

"This investment in cognitive technologies is in line with KPJ's vision to become an oncology hub in Malaysia and the region as our clinicians seek to continually deliver excellent care to the three million patients we serve each year," Amiruddin told a news conference today.

Watson for Oncology was developed by IBM in collaboration with New York-based MSK. It can summarise key medical attributes of a patient, and provide information to oncologists to help deliver treatment options, linking to peer reviewed studies that have been curated by MSK.

Besides that, it provides a large corpus of medical literature for a physician to consider, drawing on more than 300 medical journals, more than 200 textbooks, and nearly 15 million pages of text to give insights about different treatment options.

"This latest collaboration with KPJ in Malaysia further expands IBM's growing footprint of well-known healthcare institutions that are using Watson in the Asia Pacific region," said Chong Chye Neo, managing director of IBM Malaysia.

Watson for Oncology is available to assist clinicians in developing treatment plans for breast, lung, colorectal, cervical, ovarian, gastric, prostate, and bladder cancers.

Apart from this latest collaboration with IBM, KPJ is looking to adopt more advanced technology in its operations moving forward.

"Among the ventures in the pipeline are KPJ's own E-Pharmacy with online ordering, wearable technology, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT)," said Amiruddin.