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IBM's Watson To Help Diagnose, Treat Cancer
Lucas123 writes "IBM's Jeopardy-playing supercomputer, Watson, will be turning its data compiling engine toward helping oncologists diagnose and treat cancer. According to IBM, the computer is being assembled in the Richmond, Va. data center of WellPoint, the country's largest Blue Cross, Blue Shield-based healthcare company. Physicians will be able to input a patient's symptoms and Watson will use data from a patient's electronic health record, insurance claims data, and worldwide clinical research to come up with both a diagnosis and treatment based on evidence-based medicine. 'If you think about the power of [combining] all our information along with all that comparative research and medical knowledge... that's what really creates this game changing capability for healthcare,' said Lori Beer, executive vice president of Enterprise Business Services at WellPoint."
The nice thing is that its result is not just spat out of a black box--it gives a pretty accurate confidence measure, and actually links back to the articles that led it to each conclusion. That means the doctor can go and read them for himself. He may find articles he never would have found otherwise, and become a better doctor for it. It also gives the basis upon which to challenge the computer in court, if it comes to that ("Toronto", anyone?). I think the hope of WellPoint is that it will allow doctors to learn from research faster and more efficiently, so that young doctors learn faster and old doctors stay current. The more the doctors on the front lines of medicine know, the better patient outcomes will be. Nobody is saying the computer is going to ever replace the doctors altogether.
Then the legal department will come and screw everything up, of course, but we can wait a little while before that happens.
Computers are actually better at certain kinds of diagnosis than the overworked GP, though, and have been for years. In particular, computers are very good at conditional probability, and at combining information from thousands of study results that a typical GP doesn't have time to keep up with. The MYCIN AI system beat most doctors in diagnosing blood infections over 30 years ago, but wasn't adopted in actual medical practice mainly for political reasons.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The nice thing is that its result is not just spat out of a black box--it gives a pretty accurate confidence measure, and actually links back to the articles that led it to each conclusion.
A question and a comment.
First, how do you know this? It really didn't say how it is going to get an 'accurate confidence measure'? Which leads me to my comment - the completely untested assumption here is that the answer lies in the current literature, if only you could wade through it. That isn't at all clear to me. Much of the 'best' data comes from double blinded placebo controlled studies. The big problem here is that the patients are typically carefully selected for having as few other co morbidities as possible. That's very useful from a research situation but makes the data poorly generalizable to the average patient on the street who has no particular interest in being 'simple' (or rational or compliant). The rest of the medical literature is basically crap. "Expert" opinion which turns out to be wrong as often as not. Observational studies which almost always inflate the efficacy of treatments and can only provide correlation. Much of medicine has really never been studied carefully at all.
Next, if they're using any insurance company's billing data, well you might just as well consult rabbit entrails. In the US the vast majority of that data is entered in an obfuscated, outdated and thoroughly whimsical system called ICD-9 (International Classification of Diseases, version 9). The REST of the world with the possible exception of North Korea is on 10 - a system that is much more useful. But even using one of the more sophisticated medical database systems is still unlikely to give you the detail you need to actually treat someone.
Of course, there is little useful information on how this will work - whether the doc will consult this wonderful oracle or if the insurance company will send you a form letter six months after the patient died saying you should have done something different. If they are going to go through with this,, I hope to hell they are going to carefully monitor it's success (or lack thereof) over time. And do that honestly. My money is that it won't help all that much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
As someone who recently was stuck in our incredibly broken medical system with cancer that was mimicking symptoms of other diseases (which were coincidentally much more profitable to sell "management" drugs for), I actually think this could work.
You guys are on the tip where you're thinking a cold heartless machine will be making the rules, like it's a bad thing.
Look, I was stuck in a small town where the biggest industries are defense contracting and medical services. Do the math. As long as my symptoms looked plausibly like something that was going to make everyone a lot of money to sell treatment for, there was no F-ing WAY anyone was going to have any shred of curiosity about what the real problem was.
It's not that people were being dicks. They were being human. Nobody WANTED me to continue to get sicker, but nobody at the levels low enough to notice knew any better, and the people high enough up the chain to know better were too busy counting their money and running the small-business that was their practice to notice.
In the end it was ME who had to hit google, find a research university, verify that they were covered by my insurance, and basically go to my doctor and stage a sit-in until the motherfucker wrote me a referral. That shit SAVED MY LIFE.
And I'll say it again. Googling my symptoms and having the self confidence to question the system because I KNEW something didn't add up SAVED MY LIFE.
My insurance was buying the equivalent of a mid-size sedan on my behalf for medications for a disease that I did not have (that in the end were indeed making me much sicker). I'd bet Watson would have picked that shit up pronto and forwarded me up the diagnostic chain.
It has the potential for abuse, sure. But I actually would rather trust a correlation engine to pick shit like that up than a bunch of self-interested medical professionals cum-entrepreneurs. Believe that.
It seems you have a severe case of being a little pussy, I am prescribing that you man the fuck up.
Doctor: But Watson, the patient is a 5-year old girl!
Not after all that testosterone she won't be.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Wikipedia suggests that the real reason was technical: loading the required knowledge into the system was painful. This is more related to my own experience: ESs don't get adopted because UI is crappy at bests.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Of course, you're right. To the extent that any insurance company, including (especially) Blue Cross Blue Shield, is using the power of supercomputers, it's not to diagnose and treat disease, but to figure out more creative ways to NOT PAY for patients' treatment.
Let's not forget that the entire business model of health insurance companies is based on paying less for customer care than those customers paid into their policies. It's based on denying coverage. Think about that: the whole point of health insurance is to not treat patients, not treat disease.
This is why it's just insane to allow for-profit corporations to be involved at any level of health care, including pharmaceuticals. Think of all the money that is spent on researching new drugs. The entire thing could be paid for with public funds and the drugs could be made public domain and it would cost less than George Bush's Medicare Part D which was nothing but a trillion-dollar giveaway to the transnational pharmaceutical companies.
As long as we follow the for-profit model of health care, things are only going to get worse, and "medicine" is going to lead us to some very dark places. It already has.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Here's a joke for you:
What do they call the person who graduates last from Medical School?
Doctor.
As a patient, I'd like to know what sources my provider has consulted and based a diagnosis on. I don't want my health dependant on which PA or GP I get when I go to the doctors office or to the hospital. Doctors may catch the obvious things, but when its not obvious, your life literally depends on who you happen to get lucky enough to see. That's a pretty sad state of affairs, and its great if this helps.
Here's some truth for you. There are ~310 million people in the US alone. There is one "best oncologist." Most of the people are never going to see him or her.
The good news, and some more truth, is that most of the people - even those with cancer - don't need to.
The bad news is that many of them will think that they do and bitch and moan when they don't.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Unfortunate you are correct with everything except for calling what we have in the US insurance. Insurance in all other areas of life is a way to pay a little cost up front in order to be spared the expense of a rare but costly event in the future. Examples?
You get homeowners insurance in case of a fire, burglary, storm damage. These events don't happen often. I've paid homeowners for 12 years with no claims.
You get car insurance to protect for accidents, liability in an accident, or having the car stolen. These are usually higher risks than homeowners insurance so the cost is more vs what is actually being insured.
Term life insurance. Pays whomever you want upon your death. Very cheap for the young and it gets much more expensive as you get old.
Health "Insurance" is no such thing. I use healthcare all the time. Weekly if you count my family. It is not insurance is is some sort or prepaid health service contract.
Whats the difference? All of the former insurance I don't want to use. I don't want my house to burn down, I don't want to get in a car accident, I don't want to die. The insurance company and I are on the same page.
But with healthcare if I'm paying for the service I'm going to use it. Everyone has aches and pains and sniffles. If you actually had to lay a doctor what it costs out of pocket you would take more care as to how you spent those dollars. Also doctors are to blame for having a monopoly on prescribing medicine. This forces what should be a 10 minute $4 trip to the pharmacy into a $80 afternoon.
If you eliminate doctors monopoly on drugs and go back to real insurance to cover things you can't pay for out of pocket you would see costs drop.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.