IBM Drops $1 Billion On Medical Images For Watson

An anonymous reader writes: IBM is purchasing a company called Merge Healthcare for $1 billion. The company specializes in medical imaging software, and it will be a key new resource for IBM's Watson AI. Big blue's researchers estimate that 90% of all medical data is contained within images. Having a trove of them and the software to mine that data should help Watson learn how to make more accurate diagnoses. IBM thinks it'll also provide better context for run-of-the-mill medical imaging. "[A] radiologist might examine thousands of patient images a day, but only looking for abnormalities on the images themselves rather than also taking into account a person's medical history, treatments and drug regimens." They can program Watson to do both. The AI is already landing contracts to assist with medical issues: "Last week, IBM announced a partnership with CVS Health, the large pharmacy chain, to develop data-driven services to help people with chronic ailments like diabetes and heart disease better manage their health."

Comments

Re:May be the only way to bring down healthcare co

[JaredOfEuropa]

Getting rid of useless managers, red tape, and the law suits would be a pretty good start. Let government take over the bits where the market doesn't work (seriously, there are plenty). Then look into health insurers (hint: cheap health care is not in their best interest, on the contrary).

Good

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

We're long overdue for utilizing the power of computers to make educated diagnosis of medical ailments.

In 10 or 20 years no respectable doctor will make a diagnosis in any non-trivial medical scenario without using an expert medical-AI system to help sift through all the possibilities. Computers could be so much better at weighing all the factors in a complex diagnosis that it's kind of appalling that it's taken this long to get systems like this going.

The need for the human element will always be there (IMHO) but medicine has become too complex for a single, trained human to manage all the possible factors efficiently or capably. We're not there yet, but we will be soon.

Combine the advanced medical sensing capabilities we have with the power of an expert medical system, and the art of medicine will take a HUGE leap forward.

Re:Good

[demonlapin]

Thing is, so much of medicine is not diagnostics. Oh, sure, most people think of the diagnostics, because that's most of what they think of "going to the doctor" is. In reality, most doctors do not do House-style diagnostics very often. We do therapeutic interventions. And for some conditions, computers are better than people (cf. Scamper_22's comment about hypothyroidism above). But when you need your appendix out, or a heart catheterization, or management of ongoing disease... the human factor is huge.

I'm an anesthesiologist, and computers can do the mundane part of my job - but they can't deal with the physical aspects and they don't have situational awareness.

Re:Good

[demonlapin]

Actually, we are the most junior of the professions... the military, law, and clergy are older. But I'm very much not afraid of being replaced. Computers can drive cars in California weather on well-marked roads. There is a lot of distance between doing that and being able to start an IV. Cars are all the same; people are not,

I wonder how long

[rsilvergun]

until computers replace $500k/yr radiologists. It's just Heuristics.

Re:I wonder how long

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you wouldn't. Medicare pays radiologists $6 to read a single view chest x-ray (if there is also a lateral view I think it's $8). That's before billing costs. So the radiologist ends up with about $5. So you could have 50 random people give their opinion for 10 cents each for what a radiologist gets. Would they have to have malpractice insurance? If a radiologist misses a subtle abnormality they can be (and sometimes are) sued for millions of dollars.

This isn't internet misinformation-- you can look it up on the database that came out around a year ago, where you can look up how much any physician that accepts Medicare (most of us) was paid, in total (by Medicare), and for each procedure. Just plug in the name of any radiologist you can find on the internet.

http://graphics.wsj.com/medicare-billing/?mod=medicareHP

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/09/health/medicare-doctor-database.html?_r=0

Private insurance sometimes pays a little more, sometimes less-- depends on the location (if there are a couple of dominant insurance carriers and lots of small physician groups, they probably make less than medicare from private insurance; in the opposite situation, more. But not that much more). Medicaid almost always pays less than Medicare.

Re:What's the technology stack here?

[ShanghaiBill]

What's the technology stack being used for Watson?

From Wikipedia:

Software: Watson uses IBM's DeepQA software and the Apache UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture) framework. The system was written in various languages, including Java, C++, and Prolog, and runs on the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 operating system using Apache Hadoop framework to provide distributed computing.

Hardware: The system is workload optimized, integrating massively parallel POWER7 processors and being built on IBM's DeepQA technology, which it uses to generate hypotheses, gather massive evidence, and analyze data. Watson is composed of a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers, each of which uses a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight core processor, with four threads per core. In total, the system has 2,880 POWER7 processor threads and has 16 terabytes of RAM.

Re:What's the wide-spread use of Watson for medici

[NatasRevol]

First link after googling 'watson medical detection':

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...

"Wellpoint's Samuel Nessbaum has claimed that, in tests, Watson's successful diagnosis rate for lung cancer is 90 percent, compared to 50 percent for human doctors."

Second link, where it works every day:

https://www.mskcc.org/about/in...

Re:May be the only way to bring down healthcare co

[jedidiah]

The funny part about this and the collaboration with CVS is that they just took a bunch of best of breed drugs off of their list of covered medications. These are drugs for the management of serious conditions like diabetes, MS, and transplants.

If this, or any tech, is being used by an insurance company then it's likely purpose is to stiff policy holders.

Re:May be the only way to bring down healthcare co

[quantumghost]

Unfortunately, treatment will still cost more than ever due to lawsuits and drug costs.

Lawsuits are often caused by human error: sleep deprived doctors, or overconfident doctors making bad diagnoses on insufficient information.

No, actually they are not. The leading cause of lawsuits is poor communication. And if you want to believe a lawyer the top two leading causes are surgical misadventures and issues with child birth. Missed diagnosed probably comes in third.

I actually predict Watson as potentially increasing medical costs. The issue? Something we call incidentalomas. These are incidental findings that were not expected and rarely result in an identified problem. But we spend a ton of time, money, and effort tracking these down, and they rarely pan out.

A nurse with a printed flowchart will usually give a better diagnosis than a doctor. So replacing (or supplementing) doctors with AI should reduce lawsuits, and improve care.

If that is what you think, then go for it. If you believe that care from a lesser trained individual is better for you, then by all means have at it. I work with nurses, and physicians, and other "healthcare" extenders. Nurses are great a following a well ordered script. They can nail, say, 90-95% of the primary care medical problems out there (e.g. outpatient settings). The problem? If you are part of the 5-10%, they don't do so well (and cost you more money in the process). Most don't have the training or experience to "know what they don't know" or they are Unconsciously incompetent. A good primary physician is at least "Consciously incompetent" to "Unconsciously competent" and can either treat you or refer you. Now I know some are going to tell me that their doctors "know nothing", but I'll bet they know more than most nurses (yes there are physicians who shouldn't be - that's another discussion for another day).

How is this even allowed?

[Stan92057]

How is this even allowed? This is patents data, what am i missing here? they bought a comany so now they think they can data mine as they please? Dont they need the patents permission?