Watson Has Finally Grown Up and is Looking For a Job In Healthcare

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And 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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The How, And Why, You Need To Embrace Social Network Strategies

Those working in the medical and health field have a formidable competitor these days when it comes to dispensing advice, insight and information about remedies and treatment: the Web.

As a recent article in the Charlotte Observer explains, patients are running to the Internet when they have a medical question, problem or issue and very often take online information as gospel, even when contradictory data is offered up by medical professionals during appointment times.

This means medical professionals are not only trying to educate patients about personal health issues, concerns and what to do, but have to make patients understand that Internet-info may not be all that reliable, trustworthy or factual.

So what can you do when dealing with this issue? Well first, says the article, you can refer patients to reputable and reliable sites such WebMD.com and tell them to make sure any site they use has the Health on the Net seal of approval.

The reason you don’t want to discourage patients from using online resources is simple: many people are already taking Internet data as pearls of wisdom to live by given a survey that shows Google searches come in second after meeting with a doctor on a medical concern.

What healthcare professionals may also want to do, and which could be a professional feather in the career cap, is talk to management and business leaders at their companies about doing some public service initiatives to help patients discern the fact from the false when it comes to Web research on medical topics.

Another potential way to help patients is to provide a social networking presence, whether it is a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, that lets physicians and medical staff offer up suggestions and insights about newly published materials and sites that can help patients make better decisions on care but always with the big caveat of attaining a medical professional’s advice of course.

Social networking efforts can be done without legal and liability issues coming into play, say experts, and provides a valuable add-on service that may make the difference when it comes to retaining patients and boosting patient rosters.

One good example in the article is a look at how the Carolinas HealthCare System has carved out a Facebook strategy that’s working and the challenges inherent in the social networking effort.


Looking for a new job in the healthcare industry? Check out the 226,947 jobs currently available.

By: Judy Mottl