Watson Fights Cancer: Talented Search System That

January 4, 2012

As if to continue trying to prove that it can do anything, “IBM’s Watson to Help Doctors Diagnose, Treat Cancer,” reports eWeek. The AI supercomputer will be working with the Cedars-Sinai cancer center and insurance company WellPoint to evaluate cancer treatment options. Writer Brian T. Horowitz explains:

Using its data analytics and NLP [Natural Language Processing] capabilities, Watson would integrate data such as medical literature, patient histories, clinical trials, side effects and outcomes data to help doctors decide on courses of treatment. . . . Watson would also look at the characteristics of a patient’s cancer and make recommendations on cost-effective treatment that would lead to the best outcome.

Of course, this advice would not replace that of a doctor, but it could become a valuable tool. Other health care organizations have been turning to technology for solutions. For example, Dell just donated an entire cloud infrastructure to the Translational Genomics Research Institute for storing medical trial data on pediatric cancer.

Good to see technology being used for the good of humanity, right? We would like to see IBM put Watson up on a test corpus for the public to use. Wishful thinking I suppose.

Cynthia Murrell, January 4, 2012

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.