Monday, September 3, 2012

Watson turns medic: Supercomputer to diagnose disease

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Watson turns medic: Supercomputer to diagnose disease22 August 2012 byJim GilesMagazine issue 2879. Subscribe and save

More than a year after it won the quiz show Jeopardy!, IBM’s supercomputer is learning how to help doctors diagnose patients

IT IS more than a year since Watson, IBM's famous supercomputer, opened a new frontier for artificial intelligence by beating human champions of the quiz show Jeopardy!. Now Watson is learning to use its language skills to help doctors diagnose patients.

Progress is most advanced in cancer care, where IBM is working with several US hospitals to build a virtual physicians' assistant. "It's a machine that can read everything and forget nothing," says Larry Norton, a doctor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who is collaborating with IBM.

When playing Jeopardy!, Watson analysed each question in a bid to guess what it was about. Then it looked for possible answers in its database, made up of sources such as encyclopaedias, scoring each according to the evidence associated with it and answering with the highest rated answer. The system takes a similar approach when dealing with medical questions, although in this case it draws on information from medical journals and clinical guidelines.

To test the system, Watson was first tasked with answering questions taken from Doctor's Dilemma, a competition for trainee doctors that takes place at the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians. Watson was given 188 questions that it had not seen before and achieved around 50 per cent accuracy - not bad for an early test, but hardly ideal (Artificial Intelligence, doi.org/h6m).

To improve, Watson is now absorbing records - tens of thousands at Sloan-Kettering alone - of treatments and outcomes associated with individual patients. Given data on a new patient, Watson looks for information on those with similar symptoms, as well as the treatments that have been the most successful. The idea is it will give doctors a range of possible diagnoses and treatment options, each with an associated level of confidence. The result will be a system that its creators say can suggest nuanced treatment plans that take into account factors like drug interactions and a patient's medical history.

William Audeh, a doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who is working with IBM, says the last few months have involved "filling Watson's brain" with medical data. Watson is answering basic questions based on the treatment guidelines that are published by medical societies and is showing "very positive" results, he adds.

The technology is particularly useful in oncology because doctors struggle to keep up with the explosion of genomic and molecular data generated about each cancer type. This means it can take years for findings to translate into medical practice. By contrast, Watson can absorb new results and relay them to doctors quickly, together with an estimate of their potential usefulness. "Watson really has great potential," says Audeh. "Cancer needs it most because it's becoming so complicated so quickly."

The IBM system could also approve treatment requests more quickly. At WellPoint, one of the largest insurers in the US, nurses use guidelines and patient history to determine if a request is in line with company policy. Nurses are now training Watson by feeding it test requests and observing the answers. Progress is good and the system could be deployed next year, says WellPoint's Cindy Wakefield. "Now it can take up to a couple of days," she says. "We hope Watson can return the accurate recommendation in a matter of minutes."

Preparing for your financial future

Is your pension invested in the best possible way? To answer this question involves weighing up multiple investment options, future income prospects and the experience of others in similar situations. It is the kind of problem that most people struggle with, but which IBM's supercomputer Watson may be able to tackle.

IBM announced in May that it has partnered with Citi, a multinational bank, to explore the idea of training Watson as a financial adviser. It is still early days, but IBM thinks that three-way conversations, in which financial advisers put questions to Watson about the options open to a customer, could result in people making better financial decisions.

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House!Wed Aug 22 23:51:28 BST 2012 by ullrich fischer

They should call this system "House" instead of Watson. :)

login and replyreport this commentHouse!Sat Aug 25 01:14:19 BST 2012 by JayCkat

I agree. House. Every one hates him, but everyone has to agree he is good at what he does.

Not to mention, House has poor bedside manners.

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view threadHouse!Sat Aug 25 23:16:30 BST 2012 by keirjon

Do you mean because having your treatment approved by the insurance company is a bit like winning at Bingo?

login and replyreport this commentview threadHouse!Sun Aug 26 15:25:40 BST 2012 by Liza

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