CLEVELAND — Editor's note: the video in the player above is from March 26, 2021.
The Cleveland Clinic and IBM have announced a 10-year partnership that will see the creation of a new center aimed at 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."
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The center, the Discovery Accelerator, will serve as "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." It will also see IBM install its first private sector, on-premises IBM Quantum System One in the United States, on the Cleveland Clinic's campus in Cleveland, with additional plans to install the first of IBM’s next-generation 1,000+ qubit quantum systems at a client facility in Cleveland in the coming years.
The quantum program will be aimed at actively engaging entities including universities, government, industry and startups. It will also "leverage Cleveland Clinic’s global enterprise to serve as the foundation of a new quantum ecosystem for life sciences, focused on advancing quantum skills and the mission of the center."
“Through this innovative collaboration, we have a unique opportunity to bring the future to life,” said Tom Mihaljevic, M.D., CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic. “These new computing technologies can help revolutionize 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.”
Added Arvind Krishna, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IBM: “The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned one of the greatest races in the history of scientific discovery – one that demands unprecedented agility and speed. 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."