Mayo Clinic partners with IBM's Watson for clinical trials

The Mayo Clinic is partnering with IBM and its Watson supercomputer to pair cancer patients with the right clinical trials.

The Rochester clinic announced Monday it's working with the Armonk, N.Y.-based computing company on trial matching starting in 2015. The Watson cognitive computing system will sort through 8,000 Mayo studies and approximately 170,000 ongoing studies worldwide to match patients. Watson rose to fame by defeating a pair of "Jeopardy!" champions in 2011.

Dr. Nicholas LaRusso of Mayo is leading the collaboration and says Watson could "transform" how healthcare is delivered. He says the program could significantly increase the number of patients who enroll in trials, as well as the accuracy of the matching.

Mayo aims to double the share of patients who are enrolled in trials from about 5% to 10%.