Guest Lecturer at the University of Dayton - 03 April 2013
Agenda:
- What is IBM Watson and why is it important?
- How is IBM putting Watson to work?
- What can we expect in the future?
Main point: Data is growing at an astounding rate. It is growing so fast that we often lack the ability to use it to its full potential. The highly unstructured nature of this data makes the challenge that much more difficult. This is a real problem for business. It makes informed decisions more difficult to make. Business leaders need a way to find hidden patterns and isolate the valuable nuggets that they need to make business decisions.Further speaking points: Yet, the rewards for finding a way to harness the data into useful information are great; 54% of companies in this year’s study with MIT/Sloan are using analytics for competitive advantage… and that number has surged 57% in just the past 12 months. “Dying of thirst in an ocean of data”… It’s an apt analogy. Data is everywhere. 90% of it didn't exist just two years ago. The vast majority of it is totally useless for any given goal and therefore amounts to noise and a hindrance to finding the key useful information needed in a specific time and place. Additional information: See information and stats
Main Point: At the core of what makes Watson different are three powerful technologies - natural language, hypothesis generation, and evidence based learning. But Watson is more than the sum of its individual parts. Watson is about bringing these capabilities together in a way that’s never been done before resulting in a fundamental change in the way businesses look at quickly solving problemsSolutions that learn with each iterationCapable of navigating human communicationDynamically evaluating hypothesis to questions askedResponses optimized based on relevant dataIngesting and analyzing Big DataDiscovering new patterns and insights in secondsFurther speaking points:. Looking at these one by one, understanding natural language and the way we speak breaks down the communication barrier that has stood in the way between people and their machines for so long. Hypothesis generation bypasses the historic deterministic way that computers function and recognizes that there are various probabilities of various outcomes rather than a single definitive ‘right’ response. And adaptation and learning helps Watson continuously improve in the same way that humans learn….it keeps track of which of its selections were selected by users and which responses got positive feedback thus improving future response generationAdditional information: The result is a machine that functions along side of us as an assistant rather than something we wrestle with to get an adequate outcome
Main Idea: Watson is greater than the sum of its parts. However, it does have some familiar capabilities that have their roots in proven commercially available IBM offerings. And while the system specs on the left allowed Watson to process 200M pages of information in three seconds, this was a purpose-built configuration specific to the demands of answering a question in the same amount of time it takes to read it… not necessarily the same requirements of other applications. Further speaking points: Watson is the result of tremendous investment of time, resources, and ingenuity on the part of IBM. IBM spends over $6B in R&D annually. Watson was part of that investment and took five years of hard work to create. For Jeopardy, Watson held nearly twice the information contained in the US Library of Congress in instantly accessible RAM memory. On the software side, its information management capabilities combine to deliver deep content analysis and evidence based reasoning that connect widely disparate sources of information and make the kinds of connections that we as humans make. Except it never gets tired, never has an off day, and never forgets.Additional Information: Capabilities like content analytics, business analytics, big data, database and data warehouses are areas where IBM has led the market for years and which form the backbone of Watson’s strength.
75 new clinical trials start every day in the US alone .Source: Public Library of Science, oncologybiomarkers.com, NCCR$750B or 30 cents of every dollar spent on healthcare in the US is wasted .Source: Institute of Medicine
Main point: Watson use cases can be broadly broken into three classes: Ask, Discover, and Decide. Users can ASK Watson direct questions in natural language the same way they ask friends or colleagues questions. This is in contrast to reducing an inquiry to a set of keywords and receiving a set of links to sources where their answers may (or may not) lie. People who saw Watson’s victory on the quiz show Jeopardy! will be familiar with this simplest use case. Think of this as next generation chat. Second, users can DISCOVER new insights with Watson. Examples of this could be use of Watson as a research assistant such as a biotech investigator looking for the best way to treat a disease in a specific cohort of patients. Finally, users might use Watson to help them DECIDE on the best course of action. This would be for situations where users are looking for confidence-based recommendations for their next action when they have many options to chose from such as what course of treatment to prescribe to a patient or what investment choice to make.
Main point: Next let’s move to DISCOVER. Finding correlations, patterns, and relationships in a sea of data is difficult at best with today’s pervasive technology resources. That’s part of the reason it can take over ten years to bring medical research into practice for those who desperately need it. What if this could happen in months instead of years? That’s exactly what a leading cancer center is working toward today. Watson can be used to generate cohorts of patients with specific characteristics dynamically and draw upon a vast pool of medical information that doubles every five years to uncover specific (and often unexpected) findings for how to best treat them.
Main point: Finally, let’s review Watson helping professionals DECIDE their next course of action. We’ve all been in situations where there is not a single ‘right’ answer but rather, a set of possible actions with various probabilities of favorable outcomes. For example, doctors face this many times daily when deciding a course of treatment for a patient. Looking more specifically at the 1.5M Americans diagnosed with cancer annually, what if they could be given a better prognosis? That’s exactly what IBM is working on with Watson to help Oncologists make more informed, evidence-based decisions with their patients. The potential benefits are overwhelming considering that over $263B was spent treating cancer in 2010 and costs have been rising at 3X the rate of the rest of healthcare. And with as much as 44% of initial cancer diagnoses being wrong, getting the right diagnosis and best treatment for the specific patient is a matter of tremendous importance. Sources:1 - $263.8B: overall costs of cancer in the U.S. in 2010Source: American Cancer Society, National Health Institute2- Cancer costs are rising about 15 to 18 percent annually -- 3x the rate of standard healthcare costs.Source: Managed Care, January 2011 and HealthAffairs Blog, July 20113- 20% of cancer cancers receive the wrong diagnosis, with some as high as 44%.Sources: Journal of Clinical Oncology, Talk about Health Blog, Sept 2011
Main Point: What is in store for the future? IBM envisions a world in which cognitive capabilities are infused into more and more aspects of technology to help us live and work in better ways. But this is a long journey and we have only just begun stepping into this new era. Watson can help transform how organizations think, act, and operate as it learns through interaction and co-evolves with its users. With the unimaginable volume of information available in the world today, Watson’s evidence-based responses are improving business outcomes and changing people’s expectations for technology’s place in life. We’ve begun an exciting journey and we want to invite you to join us!
Main point: Join the conversation and take the next step. Further speaking points:. Get involved and learn more about ways that Watson can help your business today. Learn more on the web. Join the conversation on twitter and facebook. See how Watson was created and is having a real impact on youtube. And above all, contact your IBM representative to your priorities and goals and how Watson can help play a part in meeting them.