IBM Says Watson Health's AI Is Getting Really Good at Diagnosing Cancer (fastcompany.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: In deciding on cancer treatment, doctors often get together in a "tumor board" to go over the options. IBM's Watson now sits in on those meetings in a few hospitals, such as in South Korea and India -- and it generally makes the same calls that a human expert would. So says IBM in a series of studies it's presenting this weekend at the ASCO cancer treatment conference in Chicago. "It's not making a diagnosis. That's not what we set out to do," says Andrew Norden of IBM's Watson Health division. "They will run Watson Oncology in a tumor board and sort of get another external opinion." Watson's "concordance rate" -- the degree to which it agrees with human doctors -- ranged from 73% to 96%, depending on the type of cancer (such as colon cancer) and the particular hospital where the study was done (in India, South Korea, and Thailand).

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Mixed Messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Title: "IBM Says Watson Health's AI Is Getting Really Good at Diagnosing Cancer "
Summary: "It's not making a diagnosis. That's not what we set out to do," says Andrew Norden of IBM's Watson Health division"

Re:Mixed Messages

[hey!]

Well, that's the headline editor's fault. As I understand it, a tumor board doesn't diagnose; it makes treatment plan decisions.

Well, that's the headline writer. My understanding is that a tumor board isn't about making a diagnosis, it's about deciding between alternative modes of treatment. If your doctor happens to be a surgical oncologist, a multidisciplinary board is less likely to have a systematic bias toward surgery over chemotherapy.