Watson and Healthcare - What's All the Buzz

Fresh from an exciting and busy week at HIMSS in Orlando that was topped off with a personal highlight - witnessing the space shuttle launch from a Passenger Jet



















and the video:


There continues to be tremendous interest and excitement surrounding the potential for IBM's Jeopardy champion (Watson) to enhance medicine and ignite discussion on artificial intelligence in healthcare. This piece in the Boston Globe: The plan behind Watson: winning hearts captures the excitement and buzz we all felt at HIMSS last week that not only made Waston a household name it also garnered a huge audience with a big ratings swell. As Richard Mack put it:

“Watson has sparked the imaginations of those not just in the technology industry, but for an array of industries around the globe"

Indeed this thought provoking piece from Diagnostic Imaging: Will Watson Replace Radiologists? The question being what will the impact be in healthcare and specifically in radiology where radiologists review numerous images and base our findings on our experience and expertise, which are in turn based on reading articles and textbooks (our knowledge base) and as the author asks:

If we program all of these knowledge bases into a computer, then wouldn’t the computer be as good or likely even better than we are?

Interesting idea but I think this concept is more likely to follow form some of the automated image processing tools that are emerging, for example from Median Technologies and their LMS-Lung application:

that automates the detection, evaluation and follow-up of lesions identified in CT images. (this technology interestingly came out of missile tracking systems). Perhaps given identification of lesions and findings in images this could then be coordinated with existing reports using some component of Watson to link image findings with clinical conditions and provide some level of machine intelligence to support radiologists

But I think Dr Krishnaraj is right:

the personal relationship between a doctor and his patient can never be replaced. It is important, for example, to diagnose cancer, but how is that information communicated? I do not believe a computer will ever be able to demonstrate compassion or rest a hand of comforting support on the shoulder of a patient that is hurting

Watson is exciting technology but it does not replace the clinicians or the clinician patient interaction. Techcrunch reported on some of the back lash and lack of understanding in this piece: The Next Stop for IBM's Watson: Healthcare?. Watson does not replace human intelligence. In fact the opposite is true it supplements human intelligence providing ready access to the large amount of information available today much as we access this information in our daily lives. For example, imagine you are shopping for fruit and come across Papaya in the supermarket, you have heard its good but have no idea how to select a good papaya so you turn to your smartphone and speak or enter "How to tell a ripe papaya" (which returns 17,400 results including pictures, videos and how tos). You apply that knowledge and select a good papaya based on new information and understanding. Watson extends this capability by helping understand the underlying meaning of the terms and linking the right information together to present a closer match to possible answers. In healthcare we are overwhelmed with new information presented in the form of randomized controlled trials, publications and research papers. A quick look at one resource (The Cochrane Collaboration)

that is working to provide the best evidence for healthcare and the ~4,000 published Cochrane Reviews,  the Cochrane Library and the updated list of treatment guidance and review of protocols and you get a sense of the mass of data that clinicians need to read, digest, process and then apply in clinical practice. Dr Watson brings processing power to the clinical coal face to improve diagnostic accuracy, efficiency and patient safety but not to replace clinicians. Or as Dr Krishnaraj put it the

"personal relationship between a doctor and his patient can never be replaced"