Watson is an extremely smart computer. You may have seen Watson when the computer was a contestant on the game show “Jeopardy!”. Now that the game is over, Watson has been offered a job analyzing insurance claims, and suggesting health treatments.
Watson was created by IBM. It is an artificial intelligence computer that can answer questions that are posed to it in “natural language”. In other words, it is designed to answer questions that are worded in the way that people normally would speak. Watson is named after IBM’s first president, Thomas J. Watson.
You may have seen Watson when the computer was on “Jeopardy!”. Watson competed against two human contestants. This was the first, (and so far, only), time that the game show had a human vs. machine match. This took place on February 14 through February 16 in 2011, for a total of two games.
Watson competed against Brad Rutter, the person who was the biggest money winner of all time on the game show, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest winning streak on the show. Ken Jennings had a winning streak that lasted for 75 days. Watson won, and was awarded the first prize, which was $1 million. The prize was divided and donated to two charities.
Now, Watson has been given a job. WellPoint Inc., which is one of the largest health insurers in the United States, wants Watson to help them. WellPoint Inc. operates Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in 14 states, including New York and California. Watson’s job will be to diagnose medical ailments, and to authorize treatments for the 34.2 million people who use Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance.
Watson will be combing through data from patient’s electronic records, and going over data from the insurer’s history of medicines and treatments. Watson will also review a massive library of medical journals and textbooks. From this data, Watson will give a recommendation about a specific treatment that an individual patient should receive. It can come to that decision within seconds.
WellPoint is not going to just go along with the recommendations of Watson, however. Instead, Watson’s decisions will be reviewed by a doctor. WellPoint also says that it is not going to base it’s final decision about whether or not the insurer should accept or deny a claim based solely on Watson’s recommendation. The idea is that Watson will basically be another tool that doctors and insurers can use in their decision making process.
Some are concerned that Watson is really going to be used in ways that allow the insurance company to deny claims at a much faster rate than ever before. It has been said, however, that the use of Watson is ultimately a way to provide people the right medical care.
Image by Mark Hillary on Flickr