NEW YORK (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. IBM.N on Wednesday said it is working with the University of Pennsylvania on a large computer that will store mammogram data, helping doctors screen for breast cancer and find geographic clusters of people with the disease.
Initially, the computer will be linked with four university hospitals, enabling the hospitals to store digital versions of mammograms and use analytical tools that can help diagnose and identify cancer cell clusters in the population, IBM said.
Once the computer is in place six to eight months from now, it could be used to link many more hospitals across the nation, said Robert Hollebeek, director of the National Scalable Cluster Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.
The University of Pennsylvania has already been working with the government"s Oak Ridge National Laboratory on sharing mammogram data with the hospitals, but without the larger computer would be unable to expand the project, Hollebeek said.
IBM, a computer services and hardware company, based in Armonk, N.Y., has been working on developing computing grids, such as this one, that will use the resources of computers located in many locations to make more powerful computers.