4 ms·

Glad to see that they've finally backed off from the "Watson will revolutionize healthcare" pitch.

by bhousel 13y ago

mikeyouse 13y ago
I honestly believe it will. Maybe not Watson per se, but a distributed Waston-like system that can provide cutting edge diagnostic / treatment suggestions to the entire world will be hugely beneficial. Just imagine if anywhere on earth with cell-phone service can have 'first-world' medicine without the need for dedicated doctors. That'll probably be worth a few years of life-expectancy by itself.
- hellrich 13y ago
  According to a presentation I heard two month ago it's not good enough yet. They can make accurate predictions in many cases, yet not in all/enough. At the moment they see more potential in analyzing health insurance claims, as falling back to a human expert is easier.
  - hershel 13y ago
    Do you still have a link to the presentation ? It sounds interesting.
    - hellrich 13y ago
      I'm sorry, it was a presentation of an IBM researcher during the BioASQ workshop. Perhaps you can find the slides/a summary on the BioASQ.org website.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Watson is already better at diagnosing some cancers better than human doctors. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor/viewall http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-me...
- nfg 13y ago
  Well, even allowing that its feasible in the medium term it would give you worldwide 'first-world' diagnosis, not treatment.
  - mikeyouse 13y ago
    For most maladies, the treatment is some combination of pharmaceuticals, lifestyle changes, or diet changes. The latter two can be undertaken anywhere, so that leaves pharma. Name-brand pharmaceuticals are expensive, but in almost all cases, there are less expensive options available that are almost as good. Most of these are off-patent, can be manufactured anywhere on earth, and can be acquired for pennies. An intelligent diagnostic / treatment computer would know where the patient was located, their access to medical facilities, their access to drugs, and make a recommendation based on those qualifiers.
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  My father's life was save by early cancer diagnosis a couple years ago so it is a topic that I care about. But it's a complex and difficult topic. I find it fascinating how information technology continually seems like something that could save/improve/revolutionize healthcare but which so far consistently fails and not for a "we couldn't implement the right algorithm" kind of way. Just in the cancer topic, as I understand it, cancer now is either found by blood-test plus further examination method or by a doctor or patient "just feeling something is wrong". In the case of a lab result any improvements are going to be marginal until there are tests which taking into individual physiological/genetic differences. In the case of "something is wrong", once the flag is set, I believe you have a reasonable number of ways to check things (though without enough symptoms, you often have too many things to check, something that AI may be able to "do better at" without doing significantly better since you can't information from a brick wall any more than you can squeeze blood from a stone). The "flagging something as wrong" thing may be the most important but I strongly suspect that this part comes from doctors and patients simply having more information than is communicated by any list of symptoms. I mean, just in general, consider that "first world medicine" might be less useful for third world people who have a widely different constellation of health problems. And the discussion could go on and on. Has anyone tested whether a crack team of human doctors who only get their information discreet database formats could be useful?
- toddan 13y ago
  Imagine making a portable device that use watson to analyze your blood and health, you could give your self an medical exam every week.
nashequilibrium 13y ago
Are you kidding with this statement, i just finished reading some good research papers with focus studies on this. Do you think docs in the ER hold all the information in their head of the different types of diagnosis? The biggest mistakes usually happen when faced with a rare disorder but doctors don't have the time to find the edge cases in the ER so they go with whats familiar. My wife is a therapist and most therapist just push bipolar because they are lazy to go through all the material to find these edge cases. You should also read Mckinsey's latest report on the value of intelligent knowledge bases to the economy. This is not a some time in the future benefit, it is now and lots of business are making a shitload of money, you just don't hear about it in techcrunch, since snapchat takes all the headlines. Regarding cancer specifically this is a huge help to doctors who are actually using it but when drugs cost $300000 a year and the drug companies then give the doctors rebates. This results in doctors then billing insurance companies $300000 and making up the difference as extra cash, which drug do you think a doctor is going to prescribe to you? A lot of cancer drugs will only be effective on maybe 6% of cancer patients and the companies know this based on genetic screening but they still push it onto everyone regardless of your genetics. A company like 23andme, paired with transparent drug trial results and a knowledge base like watson will save the economy a shitload of money, but a lot of drug companies will lose out on revenue and doctors on their kickbacks. At least insurance premiums will drop but this is capitalism.....goodluck!
- mdda 13y ago
  Does this [1] lead to the PDF report you mean? [1] http://digitalinnovationtoday.com/speed-summary-mckinseys-12-disruptive-technologies-changing-the-world/ http://digitalinnovationtoday.com/speed-summary-mckinseys-12...

Glad to see that they've finally backed off from the "Watson will revolutionize healthcare" pitch.

by bhousel 13y ago

Glad to see that they've finally backed off from the "Watson will revolutionize healthcare" pitch.

I honestly believe it will. Maybe not Watson per se, but a distributed Waston-like system that can provide cutting edge diagnostic / treatment suggestions to the entire world will be hugely beneficial. Just imagine if anywhere on earth with cell-phone service can have 'first-world' medicine without the need for dedicated doctors. That'll probably be worth a few years of life-expectancy by itself.

hellrich 13y ago
According to a presentation I heard two month ago it's not good enough yet. They can make accurate predictions in many cases, yet not in all/enough. At the moment they see more potential in analyzing health insurance claims, as falling back to a human expert is easier.
- hershel 13y ago
  Do you still have a link to the presentation ? It sounds interesting.
  - hellrich 13y ago
    I'm sorry, it was a presentation of an IBM researcher during the BioASQ workshop. Perhaps you can find the slides/a summary on the BioASQ.org website.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Watson is already better at diagnosing some cancers better than human doctors. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor/viewall http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-me...
nfg 13y ago
Well, even allowing that its feasible in the medium term it would give you worldwide 'first-world' diagnosis, not treatment.
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  For most maladies, the treatment is some combination of pharmaceuticals, lifestyle changes, or diet changes. The latter two can be undertaken anywhere, so that leaves pharma. Name-brand pharmaceuticals are expensive, but in almost all cases, there are less expensive options available that are almost as good. Most of these are off-patent, can be manufactured anywhere on earth, and can be acquired for pennies. An intelligent diagnostic / treatment computer would know where the patient was located, their access to medical facilities, their access to drugs, and make a recommendation based on those qualifiers.
joe_the_user 13y ago
My father's life was save by early cancer diagnosis a couple years ago so it is a topic that I care about. But it's a complex and difficult topic. I find it fascinating how information technology continually seems like something that could save/improve/revolutionize healthcare but which so far consistently fails and not for a "we couldn't implement the right algorithm" kind of way. Just in the cancer topic, as I understand it, cancer now is either found by blood-test plus further examination method or by a doctor or patient "just feeling something is wrong". In the case of a lab result any improvements are going to be marginal until there are tests which taking into individual physiological/genetic differences. In the case of "something is wrong", once the flag is set, I believe you have a reasonable number of ways to check things (though without enough symptoms, you often have too many things to check, something that AI may be able to "do better at" without doing significantly better since you can't information from a brick wall any more than you can squeeze blood from a stone). The "flagging something as wrong" thing may be the most important but I strongly suspect that this part comes from doctors and patients simply having more information than is communicated by any list of symptoms. I mean, just in general, consider that "first world medicine" might be less useful for third world people who have a widely different constellation of health problems. And the discussion could go on and on. Has anyone tested whether a crack team of human doctors who only get their information discreet database formats could be useful?
toddan 13y ago
Imagine making a portable device that use watson to analyze your blood and health, you could give your self an medical exam every week.

nashequilibrium 13y ago

Are you kidding with this statement, i just finished reading some good research papers with focus studies on this. Do you think docs in the ER hold all the information in their head of the different types of diagnosis? The biggest mistakes usually happen when faced with a rare disorder but doctors don't have the time to find the edge cases in the ER so they go with whats familiar. My wife is a therapist and most therapist just push bipolar because they are lazy to go through all the material to find these edge cases. You should also read Mckinsey's latest report on the value of intelligent knowledge bases to the economy. This is not a some time in the future benefit, it is now and lots of business are making a shitload of money, you just don't hear about it in techcrunch, since snapchat takes all the headlines. Regarding cancer specifically this is a huge help to doctors who are actually using it but when drugs cost $300000 a year and the drug companies then give the doctors rebates. This results in doctors then billing insurance companies $300000 and making up the difference as extra cash, which drug do you think a doctor is going to prescribe to you? A lot of cancer drugs will only be effective on maybe 6% of cancer patients and the companies know this based on genetic screening but they still push it onto everyone regardless of your genetics. A company like 23andme, paired with transparent drug trial results and a knowledge base like watson will save the economy a shitload of money, but a lot of drug companies will lose out on revenue and doctors on their kickbacks. At least insurance premiums will drop but this is capitalism.....goodluck!

mdda 13y ago
Does this [1] lead to the PDF report you mean? [1] http://digitalinnovationtoday.com/speed-summary-mckinseys-12-disruptive-technologies-changing-the-world/ http://digitalinnovationtoday.com/speed-summary-mckinseys-12...