IBM’s supercomputer Watson will be used to make decisions about cancer care in 14 hospitals in the US and Canada, it has been announced.

Using computers to trawl through vast amounts of medical data speeds up the diagnosis process. The system will help assess individual tumours and suggest which drug should be used to target them. Doctors have welcomed the new computer which will learn from each case it examines.

Most people currently diagnosed with cancer will receive surgery, chemotherapy or radiation treatment. But as genetic sequencing becomes increasingly accessible and affordable, some patients are starting to benefit from treatments that target their specific cancer-causing genetic mutations.

However the process is very time-consuming – a single patient’s genome represents more than 100 gigabytes of data – and this needs to be combined with other medical records, journal studies and information about clinical trials. What would take a clinician weeks to analyse can be completed by Watson in only a few minutes.

Sometimes it is impossible to identify the main mutation and, in other cases, no targeted therapy currently exists. Those collaborating with IBM include the Cleveland Clinic, the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Centre in Omaha and the Yale Cancer Centre. Eleven others will join the programme by the end of 2015 and each will pay an undisclosed subscription fee to IBM.