Evidence-based Care
Watson, the much-hyped IBM computing system that competed and won against two top (human) Jeopardy! players earlier this year, is now going to work for WellPoint.
IBM and WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, announced an agreement in September to develop and launch Watson-based solutions “to help improve patient care through the delivery of up-to-date, evidence-based healthcare for millions of Americans.”
The system, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, was built by a team of IBM scientists to rival a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence. IBM says that Watson can sift through the equivalent of 1 million books (roughly 200 million pages of data), analyze the information and provide precise responses in less than three seconds.
As a WellPoint team player, Watson may help physicians identify treatment options that balance the interactions of various drugs and narrow among a large group of treatment choices, enabling physicians to select the more effective treatment plans for their patients quickly. It is also expected to streamline communication between a patient’s physician and their health plan, helping to improve efficiency in clinical review of complex cases. It could even be used to direct patients to the physician in their area with the best success in treating a particular illness.
WellPoint anticipates employing Watson technology through clinical pilots in early 2012.
