Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

statnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 711 posts

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

#301

Post by relaxing »

Karunamon wrote: post #270
ThinkBeat wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make awesome mainframes. Extremely reliable, and extremely good at what they do. They sure are expensive. A lot more companies should adopt them. Yet its going the way. They run at scale at a lot of companies. AS/400 / iSeries was awesome at least in the beginning. I think it may be discontinued now. Those machines were extremely reliable and well made. Often companies who had bought one had no idea where it was…

I wish there was a way to learn mainframes that were accessible to mere mortals. Some toying around with a (almost certainly illicit) emulated copy of z/OS revealed an extremely complex, no doubt powerful, but entirely alien system that I'd have loved to get my head around, but alas, I could find no good resources.

Hiding that knowledge behind expensive certifications is part of the business proposition.

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

#303

Post by listenallyall »

rafale wrote: post #249
listenallyall wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's their responsibility to stay up-to-date. If a dev can keep up with front end tech stacks, doctors, who are much more elite in their education, should keep track of latest treatment breakthroughs in their domain of expertise.

First of all, the vast majority of devs do NOT stay "up to date." Most know one language or even just one platform... i.e. "WordPress developer" or "Oracle admin". Secondly, how do you think YOU hear about new technologies... usually due to marketing. Did React just come out of nowhere? No, Facebook marketed it relentlessly. Did people discover Kotlin on their own? No, JetBrains and Google hit people over the head with it. Etc, etc

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

#304

Post by mbreese »

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.

I’m not sure about the architecture, but airline booking is very complex. You basically need to support a traveling salesman algorithm. It’s also one of the original use cases for large scale computers. The Sabre airline booking program dates back to the 60’s so it’s also very legacy. The Arstechnica article (below) has a good history of the original military program and how it helped to spin out airline booking.

Modernization for these systems was probably long overdue.

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/sabre/

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/the-most-important-c...

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

#305

Post by masalachai »

rdtwo wrote: post #203
wussboy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

While that's true, the execs who make these decisions usually don't care about the actual implementation. Once the deal is done, it falls on their "IT division". And two things happen: Jim over at IBM still pampers the exec with a dinner or two. And the exec also suspects that some, if not most, of the problems are with his IT team.

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

#306

Post by sputr »

>that GPs in particular would be replaced by a lower-cost Watson descendant

Everybody is trying to replace GPs (and even specialists) with AI.

But I've experienced a massive issue in healthcare that does not need an AI, just a good database. I was prescribed intensive imunorepresive therapy... and they forgot to put me on preventative antibiotics.

If there was a very simple IF on my prescription (if Medrol > 16mg && TimeOnMedrol > 3 months { checkIfOnAntibiotics() } ) I would not have almost died with a PCP pneumonia.

Engineers always focus on the interesting technical innovation. But we have so much low-hanging fruit still to do, that just needs to use our existing technical abilities in really, really boring ways.

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

#307

Post by nradov »

jac241 wrote: post #273
RHSeeger wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the higher tiers of nurses have at least a masters degree, and like more time working than a doctor spends in residency. They are highly trained/skilled professionals.

I would guess that most people entering NP programs at this point have less than 3 years of work experience as a nurse, a job where you are not diagnosing, coming up with treatment plans, performing procedures or doing any other physician tasks. I don't know if 500hrs of shadowing after a 2yr part-time online only program that you don't need any nursing degree or experience to enter would count as highly trained or s…

Is there any evidence that patients of NPs actually have worse outcomes? Given the current physician shortage would it be better to wait to see one, or get an appointment with a NP right away?

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

#308

Post by davidgerard »

deebosong wrote: post #181
sandworm101 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

I don't mean to inject cryptocurrency cynicism & NFT skepticism into this discussion about IBM Watson... But as someone who doesn't know the tech, but worked in the media side as a vendor at the tail end making marketing materials for IBM during their "Internet of Things" craze, I couldn't help but feel, as a laymen, so excited at what IoT (and other crazy developments like Watson) could be, because apparently IBM at…

IBM's Blockchain division was merged into the Watson division, so it's more on-topic than you might have thought. Put all the vapor together!

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

#309

Post by listenallyall »

colinmhayes wrote: post #217
listenallyall wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Illinois Doctors have to go to a one week conference every year that is supposed to talk about this stuff. They also have to take board exams every few years that make sure they're staying caught up on new advances.

It's 60 hours every 3 years, of which webinars are acceptable, and no records need to be submitted with the renewal application. There are no tests or exams. The "new advances" they must keep up on include Sexual Harassment Prevention and Implicit Bias.

https://www.isms.org/CME/Medical-License/License-Requirement...

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

#310

Post by robotresearcher »

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.

Someone should persuade governments to ban lobbying. But who?
Post reply on HN