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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

#471
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicine is a business. Its incentive is profit, not patient outcome. Everybody knows the problems with medicine and the solutions are straightforward. But they don't result in more profits, only better patient outcomes. So you only get advances when it increases profit. Come up with a way for better patient outcomes to result in higher profits and you'll see advances in patient care real damn fast.

Please list some of the solutions, because from where I am (actually in a hospital) all I see are people who care about patient outcomes.

1. Stop charging so much. People aren't seeking treatment because they're afraid of the bills.

I have other solutions, but there's no point in listing them because nobody will implement them (for the same reason that one won't be: profits over patients)

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

#472
post #25
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 assume that you're from the US? Those are both people problems. Tech can't solve many people problems, especially something as entrenched as healthcare. Isn't it huge, something like 10% of the US economy?

Interestingly, I assumed they were outside the US. Primary care docs (especially independent primary care docs) are one of the lowest paid medical doctors. Most specialists make significantly more money (and have a significantly better workload/schedule).

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

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand?

Many people think palantir cracked AI. While they are just using tensorflow and other things like anyone else. Additionally, large tech can't apply for defense contracts because of internal ethical concerns of employees. So the naritive remains.

Who thinks that? I've never heard this. People thought Watson was a lot more capable than it actually was just because of the Jeopardy PR stunt. People outside tech were buzzing about IBM and Watson. In my experience, people outside tech barely know Palantir exists.

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

you think YouTube is profitable?

Being profitable is only one angle though. Youtube is the biggest media network right now. I wouldn't be surprised if it beats Spotify as a music streaming service and a host of other unrelated sectors as well.

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

#475

What's the chances that we'll have robotic domestic servants before 2032? With AlphaZero, AlphaFold and sort-of OK machine translation, I think it's 50:50, no?

as in physical android ones? More like 2:98. I'd be very astonished if we see a robot plumber by 2050.

Plumbing seems harder than loading and unloading a dish washer. Or doing laundry.

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

#476
post #144

Who could have seen it coming? IBM created a machine that could win at Jeopardy, not a universal expert or problem solver. Say what you want about Google, but they didn't claim to solve any practical problems by creating AlphaZero.

Meanwhile Google is unfolding Google Health.

Not sure what you mean by "unfolding". But, unlike Watson, Google Health seems to be building tools that may be useful for healthcare providers rather than just marketing hype.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71DVIWZnOho

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

#477
post #408

I worked for a large e-commerce company. I wanted to investigate putting all our support data into Watson and see what sort of recommendations it could provide, maybe a sort of auto-suggestion to help our customers. Three really funny points stand out from the experience: 1) To apply for Watson access you needed to show C-level approval, so our CEO put his name and phone number on the application (trying Watson was s…

The company I worked for used some Oracle tech and I was trying to get some high level information about a product but their website kept requesting my e-mail just to show me some documentation. Once I provided them with my e-mail, I started receiving "You must take us to your leader" messages in a tone as if I was their employee and they were commanding me to take them to my CEO. I can't imagine myself chasing the C…

What are these shirts? I must know!

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

#479
I worked at IBM Watson as one of the early engineers when they first started commercializing the product. It was a fucking joke - Ginni Rometty would go up on stage and said that Watson can help diagnose cancer from CT scans and we would just look at each other and be like "Dude, Watson is just a glorified Lucene index, wtf is she talking about." They started selling Watson as the end-all for everything from cancer diagnosis to customer service chat - they even had a stupid Watson Chef thing at SXSW one year - but none of that used the original Watson codebase - it was all built from the ground up and lots of it was just simple logistic regression

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

#480
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Continuing medical education not only a responsibility but also a requirement to maintain a medical license in many states ( e.g. California [1]). [1]: https://www.mbc.ca.gov/Licensing/Physicians-and-Surgeons/Ren...

Take a look at what that actually entails. Inexpensive online courses with guaranteed passing exams, many of which have zero to do with actually treating sick people -- Secondhand Smoke. Medical Ethics. Herbal Medicine Review.

Even if a practitioner took it seriously and wanted to get a real education about actual medical issues, they aren't going to find coverage of brand new drugs in an educational setting unless it was arranged by the drug companies themselves.

https://www.netce.com/specials.php?productid=MD22X,MDSUB

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