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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

#41

Post by kijin »

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…

> there wouldn't be any point in the pharma companies sending out salespeople to do lunch seminars to convince the GPs to prescribe this or that drug

Right, but there would be a lot of point in making deals with whoever builds Watson-like devices, to turn them ever-so-slightly more likely to prescribe one drug over another or make one diagnosis over another. It might even be cheaper than hiring and sending out a bunch of salespeople.

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

#42

Post by phphphphp »

mromanuk wrote: post #6

There should be a way to bet (short) against “projects” or products, not the whole company. When they hyped about Watson Health, I “knew” it will fail.

being cynical is easy because most things fail, the challenge is in identifying winners early or identifying losers after they’ve had some measure of success.

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

#43

Post by tryptophan »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #29
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…

>that GPs in particular would be replaced by a lower-cost Watson descendant It is happening. They are called physician assistants and nurse practitioners, "supervised" by a doctor. I assume going forward, they will take more and more of the usual pink eye/ear infection/flu and other common work that does not require 6 to 8 years of post bachelor education.

It's happening because hospital corporations love them.

Corps can pay less, and since they have a tenth of the education, they order tons of profitable tests, consults, and scans because they don't know otherwise.

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

#44

Post by frosted-flakes »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #27
mromanuk wrote: post #6

There should be a way to bet (short) against “projects” or products, not the whole company. When they hyped about Watson Health, I “knew” it will fail.

Sometimes companies use their failed or loss making products to help promote their successful products. YouTube is a prime example

What failed/loss-making products is Google using to promote YouTube?

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

#45

Post by bigbillheck »

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.

We haven't banned other kinds of lobbying, why would doctors be different?

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

#46

Post by mromanuk »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #27
mromanuk wrote: post #6

There should be a way to bet (short) against “projects” or products, not the whole company. When they hyped about Watson Health, I “knew” it will fail.

Sometimes companies use their failed or loss making products to help promote their successful products. YouTube is a prime example

That’s true. Definitively this was on the plus side for IBM PR and Marketing.

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

#47

Post by plucas »

tryptophan wrote: post #43
lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that GPs in particular would be replaced by a lower-cost Watson descendant It is happening. They are called physician assistants and nurse practitioners, "supervised" by a doctor. I assume going forward, they will take more and more of the usual pink eye/ear infection/flu and other common work that does not require 6 to 8 years of post bachelor education.

It's happening because hospital corporations love them. Corps can pay less, and since they have a tenth of the education, they order tons of profitable tests, consults, and scans because they don't know otherwise.

This is a mischaracterization of P.A.s (well, not the being-paid-less bit). Do you know any personally?

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

#48

Post by nickysielicki »

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 blew their budget on marketing (remember Watson on Jeopardy?)

The final straw for me was watching football with a techhy friend and a commercial for IBMs “hybrid cloud” came on. There’s some executive mulling over whether to “go to the cloud” or whether to go with on premises, and they have a eureka moment where they learn about IBM hybrid cloud and they go into a board meeting and save the day. We both just burst out laughing.

IBM doesn’t make stuff anymore. That’s the core problem.

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

#50

Post by snarf21 »

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…

There is no need to market to Doctors now when they market directly to consumers who go demand they get the new medicine.

If we want to reduce costs, we need to move to lower level providers like a LPN or CRNP. Most people coming into a GP have the flu or an ear infection or .... and that can be handled by them. There will be one MD and to handle complicated cases and to supervise. We've already switched so that intake is done by CNA making $15/hour. In the US at least working at FAANG pays far more than being a GP.

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