How will IBM Watson affect the Future of Healthcare?

Watson: a Healthcare Future with Artificial Intelligence? Does AI help doctors or replace them?

How will IBM Watson affect the Future of Healthcare? Will it replace physician functions or just be another tool for them?

IBM made healthcare news when it directed its Watson supercomputer and artificial intelligence (AI) research to target a high-profile target: CANCER. But it seems that many in the medical industry lack the imagination needed to envision the potential that Watson offers. That’s why I’m writing today.

I was disappointed by a Business Insider article, Doctors say IBM Watson is nowhere close to being the revolution in cancer treatment it was pitched to them as. It appeared overly critical and caused me to respond this way:

“Garbage in, garbage out” is a term expressing the notion that incorrect or poor quality input will produce faulty output, especially in the literal world of computer systems. It also applies to AI systems, where the value depends on what was learned and how well they’ve been taught.

The first part of this article about a STAT investigation seems defensive, like physicians threatened by the idea of machines challenging their expertise wrote it. Don’t they realize that computers are tools meant to help them, and that they have a responsibility to feed the right stuff in? Toward the end of the article, it finally became clear that Watson actually is indeed providing the kind of help it was designed for.

Obviously, some people had unrealistic expectations of what Watson could do and how quickly it could do it. That may be because of overly zealous reporters trying to sell articles. It could have come from some IBM reps trying to make a sale, or just impress, and improperly positioning Watson’s capabilities, or neglecting to emphasize customer responsibilities. But it’s also possible that people just wanted to believe that AI would progress faster than it has. I don’t see that as justification for such a negative article.

Toward the end of the article, the authors admitted that, “It took Facebook and Amazon more than 13 years to grow [to] $20 billion.” That’s about the size of IBM’s Watson Health business unit now, after just a few years. So, to them I say, have more patience and give Watson time.

As a retired IBM technologist (retired in 1999, way before Watson) and futurist, I’ve collected quotes and predictions by people who should have been in a place to accurately predict the future but turned out to be very wrong. Here’s an article with my Top 10 Favorite False Predictions.

Watson‘s Machine Learning versus Human Learning

According to Peter Rudin in his Singularity 2030 article, “Learning is the act of acquiring new or reinforcing existing knowledge, behaviors, skills or values. Humans have the ability to learn, however with the progress in artificial intelligence, machine learning has become a new resource that can augment or even replace human learning.”

He goes on to make an important point that learning does not happen all at once but builds upon and is shaped by previous knowledge. To that end, learning may be viewed as a process, rather than a collection of factual and procedural knowledge. He

To appreciate the magic of Watson and it’s potential, let’s step back and look at how a skilled oncologist acquires her proficiency. It starts as an infant as she learns to recognize shapes and patterns and then learns to speak, read and do things through play, coaching, and practice. It takes YEARS for her to graduate from high school and college and complete her residency. How many texts and medical journals does she read in the process? A few hundred? How many patients does she and treat? Several dozen? Her knowledge and experience accumulates and enables her to weigh options and develop useful insight. That’s what IBM is doing with Watson – developing systems with the ability to learn over time and offer actionable insight.

Some History

In 2011, Watson competed on Jeopardy! and won, defeating former champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. In just 3 seconds, the time required to answer a question, Watson was able to parse and analyze the equivalent of over 200 million books on disk. For each clue, Watson displayed its three most probable “guesses” and consistently outperformed its human opponents.

Defensive Medicine

Do the doctors critical of Watson fear for their jobs? Some do. Or do more doctors see Watson as a tool for improving their effectiveness? I hope so.

Since the now-famous Jeopardy! game, Watson has gained access to general information on the Internet. But still, almost all of its cancer treatment training has come from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. That’s rather limiting.

But just imagine how Watson might evolve over the next 10-20 years, given the exponentially accelerating pace of Moore’s Law and tech innovation. Give Watson access to other cancer experts and patient medical records worldwide; and then imagine including their geographic location, genetic makeup and phenotypical behavior, which can also influence treatment effectiveness. Finally, imagine adding the benefit of being able to remotely monitor treatment progress in real-time – not just for cancer treatment but for other conditions too.

Today, Electronic Medical Records are still contained within individual hospital systems. They’re not widely shared, but if they were, a future version of Watson should be able to compare conditions, treatments and outcomes of hundreds of millions, or even billions of patients worldwide, in different cultures. Its accumulated knowledge and value could then easily surpass that of the best oncologists, and that surely has many of them worried. I’d be too.

You see, Watson is just a few years old now, and it’s getting smarter every day. There’s nothing to prevent this AI system from expanding beyond cancer treatment into other medical disciplines – nothing except a lack of imagination and will, or an industry that doesn’t want to change.

Related Video

Of course IBM is not the only company working on AI. This next video highlights virtual environments, games, and machine learning as tools for modern medicine.

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2 Comments

  1. IBM TRIES TO SELL WATSON HEALTH AGAIN (Axios, 1/5/2022) Here’s my response:

    Sell Watson for 25 cents on the dollar? What a waste!

    Impatience – I spent 30 years at IBM and saw many other examples of the company investing in promising markets only to exit later, essentially giving that market to its competition.

    Relational Database – IBM invented it and the SQL language before Oracle took that over.

    Personal Computers – IBM’s open architecture essentially created the PC market, resulting in dozens or hundreds of clones. But IBM forgot what made it great (innovation) and later started asking retailers like BestBuy what new features their next generation PCs should have. That meant they were getting the same advice as their clone competition and signaling the end of their ability to innovate.

    ThinkPad – The company sold IBM PC Division but kept the ThinkPad brand, which included features coming out of IBM Research, including the TrackPoint pointing device and accelerometers that sense a PC falling and retracting disc arms to prevent contact with the disc surface upon impact with the ground. Then, of course, IBM sold ThinkPad to Lenovo, which continues as a major PC brand in the enterprise space that IBM coveted and once owned.

    OS/2 – IBM spent millions developing this multitasking PC operating system and millions more to introduce OS/2 Warp for the consumer market. It realized corporate workers wanted to use the same operating system at home and work and would buy their home PC preloaded with Windows preinstalled. Yes, IBM also abandoned OS/2.

    Consumer Division – After much prodding from sales teams close to the customer and understanding their needs, IBM created an entire division to delight the biggest influencer of corporate IT – the end user. That included an entry into the emerging Smart Home market with IBM Home Director. But even though the company had developed leading-edge technology, they sold it off and later Consumer Division too.

    Research – Over and over I saw IBM waste millions or billions developing innovative technologies that often came from IBM Research before those strategic investments were later squandered by corporate bean counters. They apparently saw cutting expenses as the quickest way to raise profits, rather than developing new products and markets. Gone then was basic research that companies like IBM and AT&T were known for, and new research projects had to be tied to specific products.

    As a retired IBM technologist and market strategist receiving a pension, I hate to be too critical, but it seems well deserved. IBM Watson (and its artificial intelligence base) is just the latest example. It makes me truly sad and also makes me fear for the future of our nation. That’s because I see the same mindset in other big corporations that have lost their way.

  2. RELATED ARTICLES:

    IBM’s Moonshot Ambition in Healthcare (MedicalFuturist, 8/8/2021) This article, part of a series on Tech Giants in Healthcare, begins with a rather harsh critique of IBM’s Watson Health division, a failed partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center, and talks of selling off Watson Health. It seems IBM is now repurposing its A.I. computing expertise, Quantum computing, and blockchain technology into the healthcare space. ‘Maybe this time.

    Inside IBM’s Bold Vision For AI: 7 Strategic Insights From CEO Ginni Rometty (Forbes)

    The Artifcial Intelligence Revolution Has Arrived in Healthcare (Frost & Sullivan white paper) — How AI is Changing Everything from Care Provision to Operational Logistics.

    How Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are shaking up healthcare — and what it means for the future of the industry Comparison Chart - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft

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