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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

#601
post #435
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Funny, similar thing happened to me. IBM along a few other behemots pitched for a serious project at a company I worked for as enterprise arch. All companies brought their top salespeople, and all tried nasty things, but IBM was by far the worst. Their top guy started their pitch by saying he chatted with our CEO over the christmas holidays. He mentioned - and I am not making this up - that he should be talking to pe…

You perfectly demonstrated why they shouldn’t be speaking to you. Their schtick is crafted to work on levels where you don’t get to tank the deal until it’s way too late and egos are now on the line.

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

#602
post #599

I see tons of comments on how IBM sucks. Fair enough - they do. However, consider that IBM is selling off its AI crown jewel to “* refocus its business on cloud computing and AI services*.” So an IBM that does something like that knows it has a problem and is killing off the parts it doesn't need, so it can simplify and improve focus. To me, this is a good indication that the new IBM will be quite different from the…

IBM can't do cloud.

https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/ibm-lost-public-cloud

Source: I was part of "GC" in that article.

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

#603
post #469

As someone doing a CS degree now, I seem to be the only one who doesn't want to have anything on my resume to do with "AI", blockchain, ML, NFT, chatbots, etc... all I see is overhyped product after product, one-size-fits all solutions that frustrate customers and create problems for humans to clean up, hugely valued companies that have very little real improvement over conventional technology, etc. An "AI chatbot" i…

A few reasons for this: + People care about what other people are talking about. They like to fit in, like they're part of the cutting-edge. + Less experienced people have less…experience with the downsides of what they're reading about. + CS is no longer mostly people who care about computer science, in the same way that economics isn't only for people who want the understand economics. Tech salaries — especially en…

On the other hand, jumping aboard the hype train can be a good way to make some money without much skill. Might not be as fulfilling work, but it shouldn't be discounted.

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

#604

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…

> How else are doctors, especially those who are 10, 20 years removed from their residency, supposed to learn about new treatments and medicines? They are supposed to study. Continuously.

Study what? Even the New England Journal of Medicine is full of articles funded by drug companies. And for good reason -- the results of drug trials should be communicated to physicians. Buying them lunch may be less prestigious, but it's essentially the same thing.

Merck, Dec 2021: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116044

AstraZeneca, Jan 2022: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2112431

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

#605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How else are doctors, especially those who are 10, 20 years removed from their residency, supposed to learn about new treatments and medicines? They are supposed to study. Continuously.

Study what? Even the New England Journal of Medicine is full of articles funded by drug companies. And for good reason -- the results of drug trials should be communicated to physicians. Buying them lunch may be less prestigious, but it's essentially the same thing. Merck, Dec 2021: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116044 AstraZeneca, Jan 2022: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2112431

There's more material available, not just scientific journal articles. The medical specialty associations periodically release detailed guidelines covering new criteria, methods, treatments. For example:

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA....

There are courses available if you wish to be taught. There are events where people present new developments. There are paid sites like UpToDate. Even textbooks eventually get new editions and there's always plenty of fundamental science in them that doesn't change

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

#606
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the best ones I've ever worn : https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/products/white-west-indian-se...

Aren't shirts in that range having diminshing returns? like couldn't get a $100 shirt that covers most of the benefits? there has to be a optimal local maximum there right?

Not if you’re in sales, I’d guess. It almost literally tells your target C-suite that you’re cut from the same cloth and to ignore the bleating of underlings. It’s a peripheral cue calibrated to increase bonding and trust. “These are my people. I’m safe with them.”

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

#607

As someone doing a CS degree now, I seem to be the only one who doesn't want to have anything on my resume to do with "AI", blockchain, ML, NFT, chatbots, etc... all I see is overhyped product after product, one-size-fits all solutions that frustrate customers and create problems for humans to clean up, hugely valued companies that have very little real improvement over conventional technology, etc. An "AI chatbot" i…

> An "AI chatbot" is far inferior to a real user interface.

That's because you're lucky. You have good enough sight and you can use your hands. Unfortunately, that's not the case for millions of people especially since our populations are aging more.

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

#608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Study what? Even the New England Journal of Medicine is full of articles funded by drug companies. And for good reason -- the results of drug trials should be communicated to physicians. Buying them lunch may be less prestigious, but it's essentially the same thing. Merck, Dec 2021: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116044 AstraZeneca, Jan 2022: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2112431

There's more material available, not just scientific journal articles. The medical specialty associations periodically release detailed guidelines covering new criteria, methods, treatments. For example: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.... There are courses available if you wish to be taught. There are events where people present new developments. There are paid sites like UpToDate. Even t…

Did you check the Disclosures section of your article? Are there any drug companies NOT included there? Like it or not, private companies fund the vast majority of medical research in the U.S., and any doctor who wants to stay up to date cannot (and should not) ignore it all.

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare, but declare lecture honoraria or consulting fees as follows: T.U., Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Hexal, Vifor Pharma; C.B., Servier, Menarini, Merck Pharma, Novartis, Egis, Daichy Sankyo, Gilead; N.R.P., Servier, Pfizer, Sanofi, Eva Pharma; D.P., Torrent Pharmaceuticals; M.S., Medtronic, Abbott, Novartis, Servier, Pfizer, Boehringer-Ingelheim; G.S.S., AstraZeneca, Menarini, Pfizer, Servier; B.W., Vascular Dynamics USA, Inc, Relypsa, Inc, USA; Daiichi Sankyo, Pfizer, Servier, Novartis, Menarini, Omron; A.E.S., Omron, Novartis, Takeda, Servier, Abbott.

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

#609

As someone doing a CS degree now, I seem to be the only one who doesn't want to have anything on my resume to do with "AI", blockchain, ML, NFT, chatbots, etc... all I see is overhyped product after product, one-size-fits all solutions that frustrate customers and create problems for humans to clean up, hugely valued companies that have very little real improvement over conventional technology, etc. An "AI chatbot" i…

Since you're still a student, I feel like maybe I can offer some advice: First, I think you're getting the wrong lesson from this. The key takeaway is stay to away from IBM. Almost everyone in the field has known that Watson is a bunch of marketing hype since day one. It's no surprise that Watson Health didn't work out. That doesn't mean that everything is overhyped, and it's important to develop a good sense for wha…

I don't think NLP is the problem here. Even if you crack NLP perfectly and would somehow be able to build a semantic map, or whatever your technology would use, of the user request with perfect fidelity, there's still the question of actually understanding what it's about. Perfect NLP would help in very limited number of situation where the meaning is clear - i.e. doing some pre-defined action, like closing an account or telling the balance. But somebody comes with a request like "my dog ate my credit card, so I by mistake used my debit one and it resulted in overdraft and penalty change, can I have that reversed and get a new one?" and I'm pretty sure chatbot won't be able to handle it, NLP or not.

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

#610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand?

It’s promoted as a complete system, but you end up paying them to build out the system to do whatever you wanted to do.

That's how it is for just about any non-trivial business system. They're sold as complete systems, but there's still customization required for those systems to actually fit the business - and it's through offering consulting for those customizations that enterprise software vendors make the big bucks.
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