IBM Awarded For AIDS Work

IBM announced on 2 June it has won a Computerworld Honors Program Laureate for its contributions to the EuResist Network GEIE research project for AIDS treatment. Developed by IBM researchers in Haifa, Israel, the project’s new technologies and mathematical models help choose the best drug combinations for any given HIV genetic variant.

EuResist is the only freely available data-driven computational method that predicts the success of a treatment regimen against any given HIV genotype. Using analytic technologies as well as viral genotype information, it is also the only system providing the global medical community with an estimate of activity for combination therapy rather than for individual drugs.

Researchers behind the EU-funded EuResist project have developed new mathematical prediction models that not only take into account the patient’s own history, but tap into the wealth of information that EuResist researchers have amassed.

IBM says health care IT clients have contributed to its success in the area of Web portal software. “The EuResist team feels both humbled and privileged by the opportunity to put good science and state-of-the-art technologies at the service of such an important and meaningful cause,” Yardena Peres, researcher at the IBM Research Lab in Haifa, said in a statement.

The recent expansion of the EuResist database to include 370,000 viral load measurements and information from more than 33,000 patients and 98,000 therapies makes it the world’s biggest database centered on HIV resistance and clinical response information. The system’s predictions are nearly 76 percent accurate, outperforming other commonly used HIV resistance prediction tools and also outperforming human experts in the field.