TWO years ago IBM attracted a lot of attention when its “Watson” program beat two human champions at Jeopardy!   Which everyone knows is way harder then chess.

IBM now plans to adapt the system for oncologists, with trials due to begin in two clinics.   Their ultimate goal is for Watson to compare patient notes with the information harvested from medical journals, treatment guidelines, etc. It would then suggest several treatment regimens, ranked by how effective it thinks they are likely to be. Watson may even suggest clinical trials that the patient could be enrolled in.

According to the Economist  “The idea is to use the machine as a sort of prosthetic brain for doctors.”  I won’t touch that one.

For the full story http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/02/computer-aided-medicine