Cleveland Clinic and IBM begin installing the first quantum computer dedicated to healthcare

• The computer is intended to boost the pace of biomedical research through high-performance computing.

November 2022.- For the past 20 months, executives from Cleveland Clinic and IBM have been partners in a ten-year collaboration to develop quantum computing research.

The aim of this collaboration is to develop research on cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), understanding emerging pathogens and viral diseases, immunology and more.

To achieve this, they created the Cleveland Clinic-IBM Discovery Accelerator, a research centre that combines both organisations’ expertise in healthcare, technology, quantum computing and medical research.

The significance of this collaboration lies in the installation of IBM Quantum System One, the first commercial quantum computer, which is being installed on Cleveland Clinic’s main campus in Cleveland, Ohio.

In a statement, the medical centre explained that the computer is “intended to fundamentally advance the pace of biomedical research through high-performance computing”. It is also the first quantum computer dedicated to healthcare. It is expected to be ready in a few months, in early 2023.

“The current pace of scientific discovery is unacceptably slow, while our research needs are growing exponentially,” said Lara Jehi, Chief Research Information Officer at Cleveland Clinic.

“We cannot afford to continue to spend a decade or more going from a research idea in a lab to therapies on the market. Quantum offers a future to transform this pace, particularly in drug discovery and machine learning,” she added.

For her part, Dr. Ruoyi Zhou, director of the IBM Research – Cleveland Clinic Partnership, explained that the partnership seeks to harness the power of quantum computing, AI, the cloud and other computing solutions to accelerate discoveries in healthcare and life sciences.

Some of the solutions implemented by the partnership include:

• Generative Toolkit for Scientific Discovery, an AI model that infers hypotheses and accelerates research processes.

• RXN, a cloud-based platform that combines AI models with the ability to directly control robotic labs to enable the design and synthesis of new chemical compounds.

• Deep Search, an AI tool that generates insights from large volumes of structured and unstructured technical literature.

• High-performance hybrid cloud computing technologies that allow researchers to “burst” their workloads into the cloud and access the resources they need at scale.

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About Cleveland Clinic

Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit multispecialty academic medical centre that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. Located in Cleveland, Ohio, it was founded in 1921 by four renowned physicians with a vision of providing outstanding patient care based on the principles of cooperation, compassion and innovation. Cleveland Clinic has pioneered many medical breakthroughs, including coronary artery bypass surgery and the first face transplant in the United States.  

U.S. News & World Report consistently names Cleveland Clinic as one of the nation’s best hospitals in its annual “America’s Best Hospitals” survey. Among Cleveland Clinic’s 72,500 employees worldwide are more than 5,050 salaried physicians and researchers, and 17,800 registered nurses and advanced practice providers, representing 140 medical specialties and subspecialties.  Cleveland Clinic is a 6,500-bed health system that includes a 173-acre main campus near downtown Cleveland, 21 hospitals, more than 220 outpatient facilities, and locations in northeast Ohio; southeast Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; Toronto, Canada; Abu Dhabi, UAE; and London, England.

 In 2021, there were 10.2 million outpatient visits, 304,000 hospital admissions and observations, and 259,000 surgeries across Cleveland Clinic’s health system. Patients came for treatment from every state and 185 countries.  

Visit us at clevelandclinic.org. Follow us at twitter.com/ClevelandClinic. News and resources available at newsroom.clevelandclinic.org.

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