dr. watson

watson, ibm's first cognitive computer is in the process of graduating from medical school - more specifically from memorial sloan kettering (msk) in oncology. it is being readied for prime time. in this article, eweek discusses the developments. some excerpts follow:

Watson voraciously digests information for later use when called upon by users. MSK fed Watson gobs of data on the complexities of cancer and the explosion of genetic research that has set the stage for the computing system to assist doctors and nurses in changing care practices for many cancer patients with highly specialized treatments based on their personal genetic tumor type. At the same time, WellPoint has been applying Watson to a utilization management pilot program with participation from provider offices to streamline the review processes between a patients' physician and their health plan, potentially speeding approvals from utilization management professionals, reducing waste and helping ensure evidence-based care is provided.

To date, Watson has ingested more than 600,000 pieces of medical evidence, 2 million pages of text from 42 medical journals and clinical trials in the area of oncology research. Watson has the power to sift through 1.5 million patient records representing decades of cancer treatment history, such as medical records and patient outcomes, and provide to physicians evidence-based treatment options all in a matter of seconds.

"The commercialization of IBM Watson is a historic milestone that will impact the entire health care industry, said Daniel Kraft, M.D., executive director of FutureMed. "Physicians are faced with ever-increasing amounts of medical data and increased demands to improve outcomes. IBM is delivering on a vision to apply technology and innovation to health care by creating solutions that will transform our ability to improve diagnosis and treatment and to enhance quality of care for our patients."

The first commercially developed Watson-based cognitive computing solutions are:

1. Interactive Care Insights for Oncology is a first-of-its-kind Watson-based private cloud that is expected to assist medical professionals and researchers by helping identify individualized treatment options for patients with cancer, starting with lung cancer. The Maine Center for Cancer Medicine (MCCM) and WESTMED Medical Group are the first two early adopters of the capability. Their oncologists will begin testing the product and providing feedback to WellPoint, IBM and Memorial Sloan-Kettering to improve usability. 

2. Interactive Care Guide and Interactive Care Reviewer is the first Watson-based cognitive system that is expected to accelerate accepted testing and treatment by shortening pre-authorization approval time. This means that patients are moving forward with the first crucial step toward treatment more quickly.

Dr. Kris emphasized the potential for Watson to help personalize cancer treatments.
"Over the past year, we at Memorial Sloan-Kettering have worked with an IBM team to train Watson to help assist medical professionals in choosing treatments for lung and breast cancers," Kris said. "We are sharing our knowledge and expertise in oncology to help Watson learn everything it can about cancer care and how Memorial Sloan-Kettering's experts use medical information and their experience in personalized cancer treatments."

to give you a sense of the rate at which the watson system is improving, the article states: 

In the two years since it beat human opponents at "Jeopardy," Watson has gained a 240 percent improvement in system performance, reduced the system's physical requirements by 75 percent and can now be run on a single Power 750 server, IBM said.

i suspect that we will need only a small fraction of the human doctors we currently have within 10 years - this will bring about a vast improvement in healthcare. healthcare abundance is of critical importance. i believe we are moving in that direction...