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IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

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

#201

Post by FredPret »

vasco wrote: post #186
FredPret wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought to myself: no way can this be true. The US generates $21tr a year[1]. How can medical be $2.1tr a year? …turns out, it’s $2.7tr!!! [2] [1]www.tradingeconomics.com [2] https://www.statista.com/study/15826/health-care-and-social-...

20% https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta... .

Absolutely bonkers. One of every five dollars goes to healthcare.

To put this further into perspective: the US military budget is immense, as we know… and it clocks in at 3.7% of GDP [1]

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266892/military-expendit...

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

#202

Post by jac241 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #61
goodells wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The midlevels are supported by automatic protocols in Epic (e.g. sepsis, DKA -> put these dozens of orders in with 5 clicks) that physicians decide on and approve. They also rely more heavily on imaging instead of a physical exam and history. When unsure, they can consult a physician, even a specialist. It’s a very polarizing topic in medicine that patients generally aren’t privy to. Especially for resident phys…

>Many foresee a two-tiered system developing, where the rich see physicians, and the poor see midlevels. There already was a tiered system, with rich people being able to buy concierge medicine and getting preferred treatment based on who knows who on the hospital's board or if their name is on a wing of the hospital. The change now is a more visible and more granular price segmentation.

There’s no price segmentation. You pay the same for a visit with a PA or NP as for one with a physician, so why see someone with less than a tenth the experience who may have gone to an online only school with 100% acceptance rate and shadowed for 500hrs of “clinical experience“ right out of nursing school?

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

#203

Post by rdtwo »

wussboy wrote: post #165
csallen wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big deals can really put a company in danger. If the company you work with closes or cuts the deal or whatever you could loose half your revenue. On top of that big clients can be really needy especially dinosaurs companies that aren’t nimble. They take forever to pay, have lots of meetings and unreasonable expectations and expect lots of free stuff and service because they are incapable of processing Non standard invoices due to internal politics. It’s a mixed bag to deal with the big guys

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

#204

Post by zitsarethecure »

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 took a profitable RedHat and gutted it,

I know they bought Red Hat but I didn't hear that they gutted it. Can you expand on that?

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

#205

Post by Scoundreller »

Brybry wrote: post #38
saxonww wrote: post #14

I really expected that we'd see a change in my lifetime, that GPs in particular would be replaced by a lower-cost Watson descendant, with there being some other role for patient interaction, wet work, and data entry (perhaps just nurses). My mom worked for a GP for about 20 years, and it seemed to me that most of what made that guy a doctor was bedside manner + being able to remember a lot of things. But GPs often ma…

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.

> Even contact lenses are marketed with free samples.

I mean, yeah? If a shoe company required you to buy a shoe before trying it on without free returns, the shoe may as well not exist.

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

#206

Post by MattGaiser »

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 will deal with all the crappy and lazy and incompetent clients. They bid on all the government work, the bank work, the insurance work, etc.

The kinds of places where HN devs would say your career goes to die, along with your soul.

They will do the stuff the internal teams at those companies pass on.

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

#207

Post by Joeri »

riddleronroof wrote: post #96
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…

Because people who make that fatal decision read Gartner magic quadrants.

A former employer tried for years to get onto the magic quadrant, and never succeeded. Until they started paying gartner for access to their “specialist knowledge”, and suddenly they were on the magic quadrant … in the lower left, with gartner pushing them to pay more to get better access.

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

#208

Post by lotsofpulp »

jac241 wrote: post #202
lotsofpulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Many foresee a two-tiered system developing, where the rich see physicians, and the poor see midlevels. There already was a tiered system, with rich people being able to buy concierge medicine and getting preferred treatment based on who knows who on the hospital's board or if their name is on a wing of the hospital. The change now is a more visible and more granular price segmentation.

There’s no price segmentation. You pay the same for a visit with a PA or NP as for one with a physician, so why see someone with less than a tenth the experience who may have gone to an online only school with 100% acceptance rate and shadowed for 500hrs of “clinical experience“ right out of nursing school?

It will happen via in network and out of network agreements.

Healthcare providers with greater proportion of NP/PA will be selling for cheaper, so MCO will sell access to only them in their lower price plans, and healthcare providers where you get to see doctors will be in higher price plans.

This already happens, especially with many healthcare providers not accepting lower reimbursed Medicaid patients.

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

#209

Post by jac241 »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #20
saxonww wrote: post #14

I really expected that we'd see a change in my lifetime, that GPs in particular would be replaced by a lower-cost Watson descendant, with there being some other role for patient interaction, wet work, and data entry (perhaps just nurses). My mom worked for a GP for about 20 years, and it seemed to me that most of what made that guy a doctor was bedside manner + being able to remember a lot of things. But GPs often ma…

I thought we'd have banned Dr lobbying by now, even without a technological revolution.

I thought we’d have banned software engineer lobbying by now, look how much harm they’re causing - https://www.healthline.com/health-news/social-media-use-incr...

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

#210

Post by Scoundreller »

ricardobayes wrote: post #59
saxonww wrote: post #14

I really expected that we'd see a change in my lifetime, that GPs in particular would be replaced by a lower-cost Watson descendant, with there being some other role for patient interaction, wet work, and data entry (perhaps just nurses). My mom worked for a GP for about 20 years, and it seemed to me that most of what made that guy a doctor was bedside manner + being able to remember a lot of things. But GPs often ma…

I thought the same, but as I grow older, I believe people would reject this. Even a subpar human GP would be much more accepted than a computer. That's not necessarily true in some societies though, e.g. Japan probably would accept it. That said, I would probably focus on fixing the system first in a way that a significant percent of population doesn't need to order fish medicine off amazon to get treatment.

> I thought the same, but as I grow older, I believe people would reject this.

At some point, the (possibly subpar) GP will be a costlier decision (whether in dollars/time/frustration).

Just like grocery stores having 10 self-checkouts and 1 cashier.

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