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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

#291

Post by goodells »

itg wrote: post #224
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…

I'm having a hard time understanding why they would be bitter. Residency is temporary and a part of the training process. Once completed, doctors will make 2x-3x+ compared to midlevels for the rest of their careers.

Residency has a lot of problems. The match is stressful enough. Medical school graduates carry a huge amount of debt, but must complete residency before earning enough to meaningfully pay it off. Residencies pay 40-85k and most resident physicians are expected to work 80+ hours per week. 80 is the theoretical maximum, but that doesn’t count time arranging work, studying, taking board exams, etc.

All this, and if you don’t complete your residency, you have no prosperous future as a doctor. You might re-match to another residency if you’re very lucky. The hospitals know this and act accordingly. Residents and even medical students paying tuition (!) were assigned to treat COVID patients and couldn’t really decline without risking the future they’re heavily invested in.

Keep in mind, the federal government pays ~150k per year to the hospital for having the resident. Yet the residents are often more indentured workhorses than trainees. It’s not uncommon for entire departments to run overnight with only residents, but no attending physicians.

Now imagine being in this situation, and not being allowed into the “providers lounge” because you’re a resident. Or using a broad-spectrum antibiotic instead of something more specific and being scolded for poor antibiotic stewardship, while the NP who has “completed their training” can’t even properly decide antibiotics are indicated some of the time. And if that NP were ever treated the way a resident is, they could go get a job at the hospital on the other side of town and start in a week.

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

#292

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#293

Post by kitd »

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 corps tend not to do deals with small corps. They don't want the small corp to become dependent on them. Simple contract termination becomes costly and litigious otherwise.

Let the big fish swim together.

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

#294

Post by Firmwarrior »

colinmhayes wrote: post #221
vasili111 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI cannot replace doctors. It can help doctors a lot but not replace.

Of course AI could replace doctors. Some people will always prefer the bedside manner a person provides, but many others won't care, and AI will eventually do a good job at imitating a good doctor's bedside manner.

The only way AI is going to replace doctors is if medical technology advances to the point where you can repair a human as well as you can repair a machine (or someone invents AGI, I guess)

There are just too many unknowns and fiddly things going on with human bodies

edit: Haha, I guess Tex's sibling comment makes a good point though..

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

#295

Post by telxosser »

sklargh wrote: post #21

Turns out advertising at every tennis major can't make you a leader in analytics, ML and basic managed services.

What data was it using again? The blood panel your doctor orders every one to two years?

Medical diagnosis is a trivial problem for machine learning to beat humans. Humans are terrible at this.

The problem is there is not even the concept of high frequency medical data. Imagine machine learning in quant stock trading with samples once a year. Of course it isn't going to work.

The problem is all in the externalities. Doctors don't want AI. They can see the automation path and their bank account change down the line quite clearly. Not to mention most doctors don't know anything about data science so how can you have any faith in the algorithm prediction? No one wants to be the test case and then get a law suit. "I was just following what the computer said was correct". Wrong answer, pay up.

The real irony to me is in a 100 years people look at the current medical system as complete quakery. Literally have everything right now to build medical super intelligence but stuck with the human doctors doing the exact same things from 50 years ago.

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

#296

Post by relaxing »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #254
sofixa wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is airline booking software very complex? I don’t see why that software would necessitate the updating of k8s.

Yes, it is. Read up on the history of SABRE and you’ll get pretty much the entire history of digital computing, post-UNIVAC, in the process.

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

#297

Post by rch »

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.

Yeah, I surround myself with people who have their stuff together but don't feel compelled to go around flexing about it.

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

#298

Post by jjeaff »

axiosgunnar wrote: post #244
wussboy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what cost?

In civilised lands the loser has to reimburse the winner's legal costs, so at no cost. If you don't live in civilised lands, well you have other problems.

I'm not sure that is as civilized as you think it is. Loser pays discourages any small company or individual from suing because the cost is too great if they lose.

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

#299

Post by threeseed »

HollywoodZero wrote: post #180
jeremyjh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they still make a lot of money from their legacy business, z/OS & mainframes, DB/2 etc still run basically all large banks, insurance companies and many other types of businesses. IBM can charge whatever they want for the hardware and services to support these things because their customers have no alternative. So they have just been farming this for decades, and can afford not to succeed at anything else (so…

Just like Oracle. No one talks about Oracle. But they're still around. We did a major tech project to migrate off of Oracle after an acquisition of a large org that was running it. It was a year-long effort to migrate. But it was worth it since Oracle renewal costs were going to be nearly 50% of our IT budget.

a) Oracle is proven at scale.

b) Large global talent pool of Oracle experts.

c) First-class professional support.

Not everyone is looking to innovate on their database. Many just want something that is reliable and easily supported.

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

#300

Post by Sharlin »

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 don’t think “doing cool engineering” has anywhere near as much to do with staying in business than you think it does. And IBM of all tech companies is the one that always was more about suits and sales than technology.
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