Question: IBM Watson Offers Advice to Cancer Patients

IBM and the American Cancer Society (ACS) are working in partnership to develop a Watson-based advisor to support cancer patients. They will create this robust resource by drawing upon massive sources of data from both organizations, and then train Watson to use the data to understand and anticipate individuals' needs. In addition, the advisor will learn about the patient and that patient's planned treatment regimen, allowing it to offer personalized advice that matches the patient's individual characteristics, preferences, and treatment plan.40 The goal is for the Watson-based advisor to anticipate the needs of people with different types of cancers, at different stages of disease, and at various points in treatment. For example, a person with lung cancer experiencing unusual levels of pain could ask what might be causing pain. The advisor would be designed to respond with information on symptoms and self-management options associated with that persons' current and future phases of treatment, based on the experiences of people with similar characteristics.

Review Questions

1. How might visual systems and natural language processing be incorporated into the Watson cancer adviser system?

2. What other major branches of artificial intelligence are employed in the Watson cancer patient adviser?

Critical Thinking Questions

1. One of the challenges of a cognitive computing capability such as the Watson cancer adviser is keeping the information that Watson draws on as current as possible. Over time, new approaches, courses of treatment, medicines, and ideas will be discovered that are improvement over the old way of doing things. How might the Watson cancer adviser be kept as current as possible?

2. Cancer patients frequently suffer from depression. Do you think it is possible for Watson to recognize symptoms of depression and provide encouragement and advice to the patient? How might this be accomplished?