Image via WikipediaAnd considering a future in government as well.
IBM's baby, Watson has grown up. You may remember him from his Jeopardy appearance earlier this year. You know the one, where IBM's super computer beat Ken Jennings? Well, his parents have finally kicked him out of the basement, off the game show circuit and found him a great job in healthcare.
It seems that IBM has partnered with WellPoint, the nation's largest insurer to investigate new ways that technology can help manage healthcare. The computer system is unique as it can answer questions with speed and accuracy. It is able to gather huge stores of knowledge and data, looking for links between the information. In a first for computer systems, it can even understand ambiguity in language and it can "get" implied meanings as well. Once it searched for an answer, it can then give a fairly accurate answer and can even gauge how confident it is about its answer.
In healthcare, there is always the challenge of understanding huge amounts of information and using that information to understand and solve problems quickly. As healthcare has gone digital, the amount of information medical professionals have access to for each patient is increasing in leaps and bounds. This makes the problem even more complex.
For now, Wellpoint is going to be using Watson to manage hospital staff and understand more about their patients via the large amount of data they bring with them in their medical records. They hope that Watson will be able to improve patient care and give them better insights about streamlining medical care.
Although Watson has a name, it is basically just a computer program that has many exciting applications for the healthcare industry as a whole. In fact, IBM hopes that the day will come when Watson is in the room during every patient examination and works to help doctors diagnose and treat patients. The applications of this program are endless and it could be the start of a new way to think about healthcare.
It will be interesting to see how Watson performs at his new job, and IBM plans on using this model to demonstrate other applications for the program and has even been talking about applying the program to help solve government management.
Did you see Watson on Jeopardy? What do you think about using a supercomputer to manage patient health? Let me know in the comments.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for HealthcareJobsiteBlog and Beyond.com.. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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