Dr. Watson: Concerned about Flabbiness and Sugar

August 5, 2015

The IBM PR attack continues. Today’s installment pits Watson (IBM’s Jeopardy winning, post production blind, Lucene based smart software) against flab and short chain soluble carbohydrates. Think diabetes or worse a visit to the dentist.

Navigate to “Dr. Watson: IBM Plans to Use big Data to Manage Diabetes and Obesity.” The story is not new. Once again IBM is reporting a “team up” deal. I wish the stories about Watson would talk about landing very large contracts with major government entities or Fortune 100 firms. I cannot get excited about old fashioned data mining applications. Sorry. Call me jaded.

The write up states without one whit of skepticism:

This new partnership marks a substantial leap into the healthcare sector for IBM, with CVS joining the likes of Apple and Medtronic as partners of IBM’s growing data service,Watson Health. By partnering up with CVS, Watson will be able to analyze and learn from “an unprecedented mix of health information sources”, including medical records, medical insurance claims and data from smart fitness devices.

I found the notion of the UK’s National Health Service hooking up with IBM an interesting one. Does the NHS have a functioning computer infrastructure? Has the promise of taxonomies delivered something useful to its intended users?

IBM might be able to help with systems. Will Watson remediate the NHS findability challenges? What will NHS pay to get Dr. Watson on the job? Has anyone involved in the Alphr (a former PC oriented outfit?) used Watson?

I don’t think much happens with these Watson stories than recycling what Watson’s team generates with rather amazing regularity.

Where are the billion dollar plus revenues? That is important to me.

Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2015

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