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John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | March 22, 2023
Cleveland Clinic and IBM have installed the first quantum computer solely dedicated to healthcare
To speed up the discovery of new medicines and treatments, IBM and Cleveland Clinic have installed the world’s first quantum computer solely for healthcare research at the Cleveland-IBM Discovery Accelerator clinic.
The IBM Quantum System One is the first onsite, private sector IBM-managed quantum computer in the U.S., utilizing a generative toolkit and modeling capabilities to apply AI and quantum mechanics to problems that the most powerful supercomputers cannot solve.
Announced back in October, the Cleveland Clinic-IBM Discovery Accelerator will develop quantum computing pipelines to screen and optimize drugs targeting specific proteins; refine a quantum-enhanced prediction model for cardiovascular risk after non-cardiac surgery; and apply AI to genome sequence searchers and large drug-target databases to find treatments for Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
"The technologies enable researchers to advance scientific discovery and potentially shrink the time to develop new therapies for patients with diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes," Cleveland Clinic’s chief research information officer, Dr. Lara Jehi, told HCB News.
Both organizations will install a more advanced version of the system in the next few years.
The Discovery Accelerator's development is a product of a 10-year partnership between IBM and Cleveland Clinic. It analyzes large data sets with high performance computing using IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI technologies, allowing it to burst applications from private to public cloud environments to provide users with more resources.
It also utilizes RXN, a cloud-based application for using AI and robotic labs to produce chemical compounds; and Deep Search, an AI program for analyzing large structured and unstructured data sets.
To build up the future skilled workforce in computational research, IBM and Cleveland Clinic offer an educational curriculum to train and certify participants from high school to professional levels in data science, machine learning, and quantum computing.
