by Bob Larson
Seen recently on CBS TV’s 60 Minutes program, IBM has invested heavily in its Watson Artificial Intelligence (AI) business unit. It was created in 2014 with an estimated 10,000 workers. This started in 2011 when a team of IBM engineers and programmers created the Watson computer to challenge the smartest champions on Jeopardy’s TV program and won!
Watson is basically a computer programmed with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to learn and respond with answers on various questions or situations for their different industries.
IBM has acquired industry expertise and proprietary data sources in addition to supplying AI platform tools and technology. IBM first focused on health care and that business now accounts for two-thirds of the Watson enterprise. Three years ago, IBM experts began working with leading medical centers. It spent more than $4 billion buying several companies with vast medical data like billing records, patient histories, and Xray and MRI images.
A recent collaboration with Quest Diagnostics, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Broad Institute of MIT, and Harvard Medical School will combine cognitive computing with genomic tumor sequencing available to doctors and patients across the country. IBM is working with the Veterans Administration in diagnosing veterans with cancer using Watson.
At the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Watson was tested on 1,000 cancer diagnoses made by human experts. In 99 percent, Watson recommended the same treatment as the oncologists. The only difference was Watson did the diagnosis in minutes versus the doctors who took hours to several days to complete their diagnosis. In 30 percent of the cases, Watson also found a treatment option the doctors missed. This is another great use of technology for improving our healthcare.
~ Bob Larson is a former engineer, photo-journalist, technologist, and Marketing Director at 50 Plus Media Solutions