Just as the world begins to grasp the mind-bending potential of generative AI, the even more-awesome power of quantum computing is moving into the mainstream as IBM and the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic disrupt medical research with computing and analytical power never before possible.
Now, in the four decades I’ve been around the tech business, I’ve seen some pretty wild things — and certainly, my first few experiences with ChatGPT ranked right at the top of those mind-benders. But what’s coming in quantum computing — and what is in fact already here with the Cleveland Clinic and its own on-site quantum deployment — will drastically change our view of what’s possible and will unlock opportunities that at this early stage still seem unfathomable.
To drive the optimal collaboration between 102-year-old Cleveland Clinic and 112-year-old IBM, the organizations have embarked on a wide-ranging, 10-year partnership that serves as a striking example of the profound new trend toward co-creation, in which the old role-based models of “vendor” and “customer” get swept aside in favor a seamless team sharing joint visions, objectives, and work assignments.
That spirit of co-creation is reflected vividly in the name of the new initiative: the Cleveland Clinic-IBM Discovery Accelerator. The collaborative effort involves multiple facets, but the one that I believe will have the greatest impact — by far — centers on the IBM Quantum System One that has been installed at the Cleveland Clinic. (Hmm — should we refer to it as an “on-premises system”?)
In describing the nascent field of quantum computing, IBM and Cleveland Clinic for some reason chose to be extremely understated: “Quantum computing is a rapidly emerging technology that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems that today’s most powerful supercomputers cannot practically solve.”
Okay — while that’s undoubtedly true, it’s also a bit like saying, “Modern mobile devices can do some things that traditional telephones cannot practically do.” Relative to those most-powerful supercomputers, quantum computing delivers levels of performance that are almost unfathomably greater because it can address and act on volumes of data that would bring traditional systems to their (figurative) knees, and do so almost in real-time.
So with regard to medical research, the quantum system at Cleveland Clinic will not only be able to do “traditional” computing tasks blindingly fast, but also undertake entirely new and more-ambitious types of explorations whose scale and scope have never before been possible.
(For some broad background on what quantum computing is and the awesome power it will unleash, you can check out this overview from Microsoft and this one from IBM.)
While the Discovery Accelerator is still in its very early stages, here’s a look at some of the projects it’s tackling as it brings together the wide-ranging medical-science expertise of the Cleveland Clinic with IBM’s aggressive moves into not only quantum computing but also its AI and hybrid-cloud businesses:
- Screening and optimizing drugs targeted to specific proteins, representing a level of granularity never before possible
- Enhancing the predictability of cardiovascular risk following non-cardiac surgery
- Seeking better treatments and perhaps a cure for Alzheimer’s by analyzing genome sequences and related databases in new ways.
Cleveland Clinic CEO Tom Mihaljevic described in a press release how quantum and related technologies will “potentially find new treatments for patients with diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes.”
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna summed up the quantum-powered breakthrough this way: “By combining the power of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other next-generation technologies with Cleveland Clinic’s world-renowned leadership in healthcare and life sciences, we hope to ignite a new era of accelerated discovery.”
Those are pretty compelling objectives from Mihaljevic and Krishna: seeking new treatments and perhaps even cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes; and, igniting a new era of accelerated discovery.
More details about how that might come about are featured in a related IBM blog post, which outlines some other broad research programs within Cleveland Clinic that are deeply involved with the Discovery Accelerator. Those include the study of mechanisms of airway inflammation and pulmonary vascular diseases, and protecting against future public-health threats by better understanding viral pathogens and human immune responses.
From the IBM side, the blog post says, researchers are trying to “advance the pace of discovery” and “explore what wasn’t previously possible” by finding better ways to harmonize multiple big and sometimes disparate research efforts. From that blog:
“The complexity of the biomedical and healthcare data ecosystems require multidisciplinary investigations of disease trajectories, intervention possibilities and healthy homeostasis. Leveraging Cleveland Clinic’s biomedical research and clinical expertise and IBM’s global leadership in quantum computing and commitment to research at enterprise scale, the teams aim to advance the pace of discovery in healthcare and life sciences, and explore what wasn’t previously possible.”
Final Thought
I fully recognize that some of my prose toward the top of this piece is a bit breathless. But every once in while — in fact, every once in a great while — things come up that deserve to be described and discussed in that way.
Quantum computing is one of those — here’s where you can see more of what IBM’s doing in that most extraordinary field.
And the fact that quantum computing is now in operation within the Cleveland Clinic — not in some isolated tech-company development lab — is another. And as we begin to see some of the outcomes of the Cleveland Clinic-IBM Discovery Accelerator, I believe that anyone who doesn’t get a little breathless in the face of those discoveries should check for a pulse.
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