Cleveland Clinic and IBM have signed a ten-year agreement to accelerate discovery in healthcare and life sciences.

They have establish the Discovery Accelerator, a joint Cleveland Clinic-IBM centre with the mission of advancing the pace of discovery in healthcare and life sciences through the use of high performance computing on the hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing technologies. 

The collaboration is anticipated to build a robust research and clinical infrastructure to empower big data medical research in ethical, privacy preserving ways, discoveries for patient care, and novel approaches to public health threats such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

Through the Discovery Accelerator, the researchers plan to use computational technology to generate and analyse data to help enhance research in the new Global Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health, in areas such as genomics, single cell transcriptomics, population health, clinical applications, and chemical and drug discovery.

As part of the collaboration, IBM plans to install its first private sector, on-premises IBM Quantum System One in the USA, to be located on Cleveland Clinic’s campus in Cleveland. The company also plans to install the first of IBM’s 1000+ qubit quantum systems at a client facility, also to be located in Cleveland, in the coming years.

“Through this innovative collaboration, we have a unique opportunity to bring the future to life,” said Tom Mihaljevic, CEO of Cleveland Clinic. “These new computing technologies can help revolutionise discovery in the life sciences. The Discovery Accelerator will enable our renowned teams to build a forward-looking digital infrastructure and help transform medicine, while training the workforce of the future and potentially growing our economy.”

The quantum programme will be designed to engage actively with universities, government, industry, start-ups and other relevant organisations. It will leverage Cleveland Clinic’s global enterprise to serve as the foundation of a quantum ecosystem for life sciences, focused on advancing quantum skills and the mission of the centre.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has spawned one of the greatest races in the history of scientific discovery, one that demands unprecedented agility and speed,” said Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM. “At the same time, science is experiencing a change of its own, with high performance computing, hybrid cloud, data, AI and quantum computing being used in new ways to break through long-standing bottlenecks in scientific discovery. Our new collaboration with Cleveland Clinic will combine their world-renowned expertise in healthcare and life sciences with IBM’s next-generation technologies to make scientific discovery faster, and the scope of that discovery larger than ever.”

The centre, supported by a $500m investment from the state of Ohio, Jobs Ohio and Cleveland Clinic, brings together a research team focused on broadening understanding of viral pathogens, virus-induced cancers, genomics, immunology and immunotherapies. It will build upon Cleveland Clinic’s existing programmes and expertise, with newly recruited experts in immunology, cancer biology, immune-oncology and infectious disease research as well as technology development and education. Researchers will expand critical work on studying, preparing and protecting against emerging pathogens and virus-related diseases.

“Quantum will make the impossible possible, and when the governor and I announced the Cleveland Innovation District earlier this year, this was the kind of innovative investment I hoped it would advance,” said Jon Husted, director of Innovate Ohio. “A partnership between these two great institutions will put Cleveland and Ohio on the map for advanced medical and scientific research, providing a unique opportunity to improve treatment options for patients and solve some of our greatest healthcare challenges.”

The pace of progress in science historically has been limited by bottlenecks. Researchers are increasingly working to overcome these bottlenecks with the application of AI, quantum computing and hybrid cloud technologies. New technologies are enabling accelerated methods of discovery that include deep search, AI and quantum-enriched simulation, generative models, and cloud-based AI-driven autonomous labs.

Leveraging these combined innovations should supercharge generations of information technology and fuel advances in science. IBM will provide access to research and commercial technologies, education and tools to assist Cleveland Clinic in accelerating discovery in healthcare and life science, including Robo RXN, a cloud-based platform that combines AI models and robots to help scientists design and synthesise new molecules remotely.

The IBM Functional Genomics Platform, a cloud-based repository and research tool, uses novel approaches to reveal the molecular features in viral and bacterial genomes to help accelerate discovery of molecular targets required for drug design, test development and treatment. Deep Search helps researchers access structured and unstructured data quickly. And hybrid cloud computing technologies can help researchers burst their workloads into the cloud and access the resources they need at scale.

Quantum computing has the potential to have an immense impact on key healthcare challenges, such as the discovery of molecules that can serve as the basis of pharmaceutical breakthroughs and spur the development of medicines and could enhance the ability to derive deep insight from complex data that are at the heart of some of the largest challenges in healthcare.

The Discovery Accelerator will leverage IBM’s multi-year roadmap for advancing quantum computing, bringing its capabilities into the hands of scientists and practitioners in healthcare and life sciences. In addition to an on-premises quantum system, Cleveland Clinic will also have access to IBM’s fleet of more than 20 quantum systems, accessible via the cloud. IBM is targeting to unveil its first next generation 1000+ qubit quantum system in 2023, and Cleveland Clinic is planned to be the site of the first private-sector on-premises system.

A significant pillar of the programme plans to focus on educating the workforce of the future and creating jobs to grow the economy. The ten-year collaboration plans to include education and workforce development opportunities related to quantum computing.

The innovative educational curriculum will be designed for participants from high school to professional level and offer training and certification programmes in data science and quantum computing, building the skilled workforce needed for data science research.

Cleveland Clinic and IBM plan to hold research symposia and workshops with joint sessions by IBM and academic researchers for academia, industry, government and the general public.