IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#161

Post by KerrAvon » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

chromatin wrote: post #83

wiz21c wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bedside manner + being able to remember a lot of things My impression is that accompanying a patient is super important, it helps to understand illness, to have a plan in case of more complex treatments, etc. Then my doctor has the ability to know me and gauge my health. She's also very good at probabilities and detecting when something really goes wrong. I'm sure that being able to do that require a lot more than…

It also helps to have a relationship with a patient (or person). There are some people who will never, ever complain about anything. When they complain of severe abdominal pain, for example, you pull out all the stops immediately to figure out what's wrong, because it's probably really bad. On the other hand, there are hypochondriacs and people will low pain tolerance. While they can certainly also become seriously i…

Sometimes a relationship is bad. If you think someone’s a hypochondriac, but in fact they’re unusually sensitive, you’ll dismiss a lot of what they say and that can be quite damaging over time. (Especially if they’re female https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-dispariti...).

I wouldn’t eliminate GPs from the process, but many people actually would like to hear what the robots have to say about their medical conditions. Having second opinions of this sort available might lead to better patient outcomes.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#162

Post by Tade0 » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #48

I do not understand how IBM stays in business. As far as I’m concerned the only cool engineering thing IBM does anymore is POWER, which has a sort of unique memory architecture but otherwise is well behind everyone else. What else did they do in my lifetime? They took a profitable RedHat and gutted it, they took the best Laptop line and sold it to Lenovo and almost ruined it, they tried to be a front runner in ML but…

> I do not understand how IBM stays in business.

They make money on those who have more than they know what to do with.

Case in point: I spent six months in a project, which at its peak had about forty people working on it. Eventually it was scrapped and replaced with a solution from IBM, which in turn ended up... not being used at all.

Overall it was a hilarious waste of everyone's time, but somehow that was okay.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#163

Post by wussboy » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #122

Bombthecat wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck suing ibm..

It may take a while, but you’ll win.

At what cost?

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#164

Post by hacknews20 » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

aunty_helen wrote: post #141

JediPig wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so I worked at IBM cloud, and can confirm this. They bought a cloud service, that by itself, and if left alone would been great. Soft(....something...) was the company... then IBM came and changed everything. I remember the SVP / President of ibm cloud showing up... talking 3 hours about how her son is so great and that we should 'follow' his example... after hour 3, man goes and interrupts and asks a question that w…

I’ve sat in an all hands like that before. Literally 50k$ an hour being wasted listening to some guy we’ll only ever see once talk about his sons 18th birthday. Weird experience.

Same here- if they start talking about their kids, it’s over for someone, possibly lots of someones.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#165

Post by wussboy » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #132

nickysielicki wrote: post #48

I do not understand how IBM stays in business. As far as I’m concerned the only cool engineering thing IBM does anymore is POWER, which has a sort of unique memory architecture but otherwise is well behind everyone else. What else did they do in my lifetime? They took a profitable RedHat and gutted it, they took the best Laptop line and sold it to Lenovo and almost ruined it, they tried to be a front runner in ML but…

My stepdad manages a team in IT for a very large, very slow company in the banking/financial sector. The decisions about what software and hosting solutions they'll use are made by execs at the upper echelons, probably over games of golf by people who don't know that much. They just know, "I really like Jim over at IBM, he's got a real swagger to his step" and "other big companies are using them" and "hell they just…

I spent 10 years at a small (<80 people) CX company that was full of intelligent, motivated employees. We were smart and quick and lean and did very good work. But we never dragged in big deals because no one at the company had that swagger/access to high-levels. The scenario you describe is dumb and ruinous and, unfortunately, true.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#166

Post by raincom » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #93

duck_bacon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was part of that acquisition. To be fair, Weather Channel was already running Weather Underground into the ground when they acquired it first. IBM just came in and helped them finished the job. A huge part of it was the incompetence with which IBM pushed us to use Watson modules in our products, which I could see 6 years ago were worse than open source AI options and had no application to Weather Underground's serv…

>> They were basically toy projects being advertised as ground-breaking AI. They were media events that lead to powerful media events, which in turn lead to investors pumping money into the stock price. Shareholder value is the only real profit. Watson being on Jeopardy no doubt garnered investment dollars from thousands of wealthy retirees. Those toy projects earned their keep many times over.

This is a great insight. Even if execs know $x billions will be wasted on such trendy projects (toy projects to those who know what’s going on), they will still go and spend $x billions. Why? Since it keeps the market cap going up. This positive delta in the market cap is almost 10 times more than $x billions.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#167

Post by Jabbles » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #151

Brybry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American medical system is truly bizarre. I've been to private practices where every day at lunch or near end of day there would be some drug rep with food for all the staff. And a psychiatrist that had stacks of free samples of drugs. Even contact lenses are marketed with free samples.

Everyone talks about the relationship between drug reps and doctors like it's the most incestuous, evil, corrupt thing. How else are doctors, especially those who are 10, 20 years removed from their residency, supposed to learn about new treatments and medicines? Alexa, what is best current treatment for a duodenal ulcer? You think a doctor is going to spend his limited downtime perusing the PDR (which no longer exis…

Scrubs covers this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVTWoPeMWSQ

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#168

Post by stefan_ » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

300bps wrote: post #98

nickysielicki wrote: post #48

I do not understand how IBM stays in business. As far as I’m concerned the only cool engineering thing IBM does anymore is POWER, which has a sort of unique memory architecture but otherwise is well behind everyone else. What else did they do in my lifetime? They took a profitable RedHat and gutted it, they took the best Laptop line and sold it to Lenovo and almost ruined it, they tried to be a front runner in ML but…

They’re a public company. Here’s how they make money: https://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM-2Q-Earnings-Press-R...

That's a joke. If you read that drivel prepared for the stock market, you would come away thinking IBM is the biggest Cloud operator in the world. In reality of course they have just rebranded all kind of cash flow streams as "cloud" - because they know "cloud" will make the stock go up whereas "mainframe" makes it go down.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#169

Post by rbanffy » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #145

lokar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also run th backed for major airline booking systems, and charge outrageous amounts.

The biggest airline booking system, Amadeus, can actually run on Kubernetes and some airlines are migrating to it. Fun fact: a few years back Amadeus employees were in the top 15 of k8s contributors by company.

I’d love to see their architecture. Do they publish much?

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#170

Post by tinyhouse » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #48

I do not understand how IBM stays in business. As far as I’m concerned the only cool engineering thing IBM does anymore is POWER, which has a sort of unique memory architecture but otherwise is well behind everyone else. What else did they do in my lifetime? They took a profitable RedHat and gutted it, they took the best Laptop line and sold it to Lenovo and almost ruined it, they tried to be a front runner in ML but…

> I do not understand how IBM stays in business.

I understand why you're saying this. I have no idea either. However, open their 10-K and you'll find out how they make money. In fact, while their revenue and profits are declining, they still make more than $70B in revenue a year with a profit of about $4-5B, so their ability to stay in business is higher than many tech companies that are not profitable.