IBM is diving headfirst into health care
Technology is to health care these days like aspirin is to headaches. And while high tech can't cure all the ills plaguing health care, it's showing up in more and more places.
For instance, IBM (IBM) has revved up its super-smart artificial intelligence system called Watson and has pointed it directly at the health care market. To bolster Watson's capabilities, Big Blue announced on Monday that it's acquiring some companies with expertise in managing large amounts of patient data, and it's partnering with three other heavyweights: Apple (AAPL), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Medtronic (MDT).
IBM will help analyze huge amounts of data then and deliver what it learns to health care providers, for a price. Apple will integrate apps using Watson technology into its health care offering on iPhones. J&J plans a concierge service for patients receiving knee surgery to help them better recover. Medical technology company Medtronic plans to pull in data from the many devices it makes and analyze the info for better future designs.
It's not the first time Watson, which gained notoriety for handily beating humans at "Jeopardy!" has been used in a health care setting. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and health care company Wellpoint partnered with IBM to have Watson analyze massive databases of medical literature. The result during some trials was an ability to diagnose lung cancer with a 90 percent accuracy rate, compared to human experts who could reach only 50 percent. People might as well have flipped a coin. The machine wiped the sterile floor with them.
Such massive data-crunching is likely to help the industry become more effective. Doctors don't have time to keep up with the massive amounts of new research in their field, so they can get stuck in the state of medicine from years ago. Having the insights resulting from looking at the outcomes of different combinations of treatments and case particulars could mean better diagnoses and prognoses.
It's part of the march of the robots into medicine. J&J has anesthesia robots that can deliver low-level sedation with the supervision of an anesthesiologist. There's even a hair transplant robot that can automate the cosmetic procedure. But will the robots ever make house calls?