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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

#631

Post by matheusmoreira »

listenallyall wrote: post #622
matheusmoreira wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did see that. I don't see that as a reason to doubt the recommendations of this particular article. I thought we were talking about direct marketing by pharmaceutical company representatives by the way. It is of course impossible to separate modern medicine from the pharmaceutical industry since many therapies depend directly on them. It's still the doctor's job to figure out which medicines are actually good and w…

Why is "direct marketing" (drug reps) verboten but an article paid for by the same company is legitimate? What if the reason for the drug rep's visit is to bring a copy of the article to the doctor?

> Why is "direct marketing" (drug reps) verboten but an article paid for by the same company is legitimate?

Scientific articles are published and read by the community. There are, for example, social media and messaging groups where doctors will post and discuss articles, including their methododology and limitations. There's always the possibility that the study could actually be relevant.

Drug company representatitives talk to doctors in private in order to try and convince them to prescribe drugs. Like all marketing, there's an inherent dishonesty to it. You always assume they're overstating the positives, downplaying the negatives and ignoring alternatives. Doing this is actually the doctor's job. It's our job to pick these claims apart and figure out what's true and what isn't so that patients don't have to do it.

Doctor-drug industry relationship is at its healthiest when they're just giving doctors free samples of the drugs they were already going to prescribe anyway. Doesn't change the doctor's conduct and helps patients with free medicine. Doctors are already going to prescribe angiotensin receptor blockers for hypertension, drug company representatives won't change that. They can and should provide free samples though, free medication helps everyone.

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

#632

Post by throwaway-octet »

zitsarethecure wrote: post #204
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…

> They took a profitable RedHat and gutted it, I know they bought Red Hat but I didn't hear that they gutted it. Can you expand on that?

Longtime Red Hatter here (in a non-engineering role). No "gutting" has taken place whatsoever. Thus far IBM has had an almost entirely hands-off, do-things-your-way, noninterference-in-internal-affairs sort of approach to Red Hat. That's not to say Red Hat hasn't had challenges but those likely would have developed even if it had remained independent.

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

#633

Post by mlindner »

alar44 wrote: post #459
dpflan wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep Blue preceded this. They had specialty equipment for crunching chess moves. Really excellent hype machine. I liked the documentary about it: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0379296/

I don't see the problem here, that was literally the point. To build a chess computer.

I think the above poster's point was that they think Watson's point was to build a Jeopardy machine (and hype).

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

#634

Post by pyuser583 »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #436

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…

You’re absolutely, 100% right.

I once worked for a company an “AI” company that was business logic, with humans handling the hard cases. They screamed “AI! AI!”

They had a really really really good product. They’re quite successful and good at what they do. The customers are happy. They’re makings money.

So why bragging about non-existent AI?

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

#635

Post by zeagle »

jac241 wrote: post #357
nradov wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Many studies comparing NP and physician outcomes will have the NPs under supervision by physicians, which is ideally how they would be used, but in practice the true supervision level varies widely. I wouldn't see an NP for my care personally, and I doubt there are many physicians who would. The wait time to see primary care physicians is typically less than a week in most places and would be worth it. If you're expe…

I will add my anecdotal perspective as a rheumatologist at a tertiary care centre to your second last reference. I have a lot of respect for the work my NP/PA colleagues do, particularly on the ward. Yet I see a notable difference in the quality of referrals from MDs vs. most NPs/PAs whether it be from clinic, ER, or ward. With some exception it's often please see for [subjective complaint], a + random test that was checked, and query [disease that goes with that antibody] or a misunderstanding of what I see in my discipline. Not to say that MDs have it perfect but I'm not sure if it's the shorter training, more algorithmic focus, less confidence in their physical exam that drives this. As a healthy 20 year old I'd have said an NP/PA is great for primary care but I just don't see it as a solution as people age and get more medically complicated.

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

#636

Post by torbTurret »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #436

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…

“… something I never knew, because I took the time to go through the menus when I first got the app and learn what functions existed.”

That’s great but not representative of average customers at all.

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

#637

Post by makapuf »

listenallyall wrote: post #303
rafale wrote: 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.

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 wi…

Is it really the case that Facebook marketed heavily React? Why? What do they gain from it? Real question, or not like react was an entry point to their API?

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

#638

Post by hef19898 »

stathibus wrote: post #345
tekstar wrote: post #260

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…

IBM is famous for charging people for the privilege of talking to them, even if you're trying to sell them something. This strategy makes sense if you consider that even in it's heyday Watson was 95% data science consulting firm and 5% actual valuable technology. I really think Watson is one of the biggest tech marketing bamboozles of the 21st century. Through Jeopardy they really had a segment of the business world…

>> even in it's heyday Watson was 95% data science consulting firm and 5% actual valuable technology

So, like a lot of other AI and ML companies out there?

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

#639

Post by Ultimatt »

stathibus wrote: post #345
tekstar wrote: post #260

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…

IBM is famous for charging people for the privilege of talking to them, even if you're trying to sell them something. This strategy makes sense if you consider that even in it's heyday Watson was 95% data science consulting firm and 5% actual valuable technology. I really think Watson is one of the biggest tech marketing bamboozles of the 21st century. Through Jeopardy they really had a segment of the business world…

They bamboozled no one who knew anything. Even the "sold off in parts" bit in the OP article title doesn't surprise anyone who knows what "Watson Health" means. It was never a platform just a bunch of disjoint garbage components. You couldn't sell the platform so now they're selling off the tools. Imagine a toolbox with a spade a fork lift and a soldering iron.

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

#640

Post by hef19898 »

jelling wrote: post #457
qaq wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindah like Palantir

Ehh...I get why tech people are suspect of Palantir but they're just disrupting other government contractors. And from my limited experience working with the government, they absolutely need / want / rely on having companies hold their hand as they insist on doing things the hard, slow, and very custom way.

If it was just government...
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