IBM Watson
Start Date
5-19-2012 10:15 AM
End Date
5-19-2012 10:30 AM
Description
Industry Brief: Healthcare
What is Watson?
Watson, named afterIBM’s founder Thomas J. Watson, was developed by a team ofIBMscientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge – build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence. In its debut on Jeopardy, it processed the equivalent of 1 million books, or roughly 200 million pages, to provide a response to a question in 3 sections. Watson’s ability to understand the meaning and context of human language, and rapidly process information to find precise answers to complex questions, holds enormous potential to transform how computers can help people accomplish tasks in business and their personal lives. It represents the ability to gain meaningful insights from massive amounts of data, confidently make decisions, and make sense of structured and unstructured data (such as natural language). Watson can ingest and consider information from disparate sources including a patient’s medical history, examination notes, test results, medical texts and current clinical research, all in a manner consistent with privacy and security laws. Beyond Jeopardy! the technology behind Watson can be adapted to solve problems and drive progress across Healthcare.
Watson for Healthcare
Consider the dilemma faced by physicians today. Researching volumes of data contributes to better diagnosis and treatment options. However, with medical information doubling every five years, physicians face a formidable challenge of incorporating hundreds of thousands of articles and studies, and associated findings, into practice. And that capability is only part of the overall solution. Understanding a patient’s condition also involves posing complex questions and applying highly structured reasoning. As a result, an estimated 15 percent of diagnoses are inaccurate or incomplete.1 The best way to help doctors is to provide powerful tools that are integrated into their normal decision-making processes.
To that end, Watson provides a new level of man + machine collaboration. This type of supporting relationship for the care provider is aimed at empowering and assisting them, not replacing or encroaching on their decision making power. Watson points to a new paradigm emerging in health analytics - advanced analytic systems enabling physicians to make sense of the enormous amount of data being created from an increasingly instrumented healthcare world. In short, healthcare becomes truly evidence-based.
In a Watson-enabled future, transforming physician effectiveness, patient outcomes and business performance is within reach. Watson can bring relevant information into clinical and business decisions and help doctors to better serve their patients.
- Re-analyze conversations with a patient to identify new insights.
- Raise new questions in a doctor-patient discussion to help clarify conditions, symptoms and results.
- Help protect against bias or situations in which a physician might try to reinforce an initial diagnosis without equally considering all available information.
- Enable healthcare professionals worldwide to hold collaborative dialogue to better determine the most effective treatment options
- Automatically process all information around a patient case, backed up by critical nuggets of evidence from all considered sources -- ranked and organized.
This future vision may sound far off. But through the use of our advanced analytics solutions and services,IBMcan today help healthcare organizations turn clinical and business data into actionable insights for better outcomes.
1Harvard Business Review, 2010
Learning Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will:
1. Describe Watson in healthcare settings
2. Discuss the differences between Watson and Search Engines
3. Identify 3 measurable goals of Watson within healthcare systems
IBM Watson
Industry Brief: Healthcare
What is Watson?
Watson, named afterIBM’s founder Thomas J. Watson, was developed by a team ofIBMscientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge – build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence. In its debut on Jeopardy, it processed the equivalent of 1 million books, or roughly 200 million pages, to provide a response to a question in 3 sections. Watson’s ability to understand the meaning and context of human language, and rapidly process information to find precise answers to complex questions, holds enormous potential to transform how computers can help people accomplish tasks in business and their personal lives. It represents the ability to gain meaningful insights from massive amounts of data, confidently make decisions, and make sense of structured and unstructured data (such as natural language). Watson can ingest and consider information from disparate sources including a patient’s medical history, examination notes, test results, medical texts and current clinical research, all in a manner consistent with privacy and security laws. Beyond Jeopardy! the technology behind Watson can be adapted to solve problems and drive progress across Healthcare.
Watson for Healthcare
Consider the dilemma faced by physicians today. Researching volumes of data contributes to better diagnosis and treatment options. However, with medical information doubling every five years, physicians face a formidable challenge of incorporating hundreds of thousands of articles and studies, and associated findings, into practice. And that capability is only part of the overall solution. Understanding a patient’s condition also involves posing complex questions and applying highly structured reasoning. As a result, an estimated 15 percent of diagnoses are inaccurate or incomplete.1 The best way to help doctors is to provide powerful tools that are integrated into their normal decision-making processes.
To that end, Watson provides a new level of man + machine collaboration. This type of supporting relationship for the care provider is aimed at empowering and assisting them, not replacing or encroaching on their decision making power. Watson points to a new paradigm emerging in health analytics - advanced analytic systems enabling physicians to make sense of the enormous amount of data being created from an increasingly instrumented healthcare world. In short, healthcare becomes truly evidence-based.
In a Watson-enabled future, transforming physician effectiveness, patient outcomes and business performance is within reach. Watson can bring relevant information into clinical and business decisions and help doctors to better serve their patients.
- Re-analyze conversations with a patient to identify new insights.
- Raise new questions in a doctor-patient discussion to help clarify conditions, symptoms and results.
- Help protect against bias or situations in which a physician might try to reinforce an initial diagnosis without equally considering all available information.
- Enable healthcare professionals worldwide to hold collaborative dialogue to better determine the most effective treatment options
- Automatically process all information around a patient case, backed up by critical nuggets of evidence from all considered sources -- ranked and organized.
This future vision may sound far off. But through the use of our advanced analytics solutions and services,IBMcan today help healthcare organizations turn clinical and business data into actionable insights for better outcomes.
1Harvard Business Review, 2010
Learning Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will:
1. Describe Watson in healthcare settings
2. Discuss the differences between Watson and Search Engines
3. Identify 3 measurable goals of Watson within healthcare systems
