An apple a day keeps the computer away: could a robot diagnose diseases?

In the previous articles, we have already seen many trends involving artificial intelligence and their possible future applications: the way it may affect car companies and how could law firms benefit from this new technology. But what kind of improvements could a robot bring to the medical scene? Would you trust a robot when it comes to your personal health?

In 2010 IBM developed the first artificial intelligence that understands and answers to questions in natural language and uses machine learning to analyse unstructured data. Watson, the name of this technology, is able to quickly extract information from all kinds of documents and reveal insights, patterns and relationships across data. 

In its first application, Watson competed on Jeopardy! with its previous winners, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, and won the first price of $1 million. This was just a test to prove its capability of answering natural language questions…and of course it was a success!

After this trial, IBM started improving Watson’s capabilities and, at the moment, it has found several applications in law, finance and retail fields. It is also currently used in fantasy football in the US’ NFL! 

However, the main field in which Watson is currently working on is healthcare. With its cognitive system, it is able to analyse, understand, reason and learn data at a speed that humans could never reach.

Healthcare data doubles every 24 months and doctors do not have the possibility to keep up with these new insights. Watson is able to read 200 million pages in 3 seconds and understand unstructured data, something that current systems can’t do. It is able to diagnose a disease just by analysing the medical reports and comparing them with the new findings in the medical field.

Starting from 2011, several US clinics collaborated with IBM to utilize Watson to suggest treatments options for their patients. Since February 2013, it started collaborating with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on lung cancer treatment, and following this example many other oncological centers decided to use this artificial intelligence to improve the decision making process and to fasten diagnoses.

IBM itself, to promote Watson capabilities, decided to launch a program within the company to help its employees fighting cancer, in collaboration with “Best Doctors”, a clinical consultation provider.

As we have already mentioned, Watson has analytical capabilities that humans or current systems cannot reply in any way. It can suggest a diagnostic for a disease and leave the doctors to deal with the patient without wasting time in keeping up with the new medical findings.

This is going to be one of the most disruptive innovations for this field, but may also bring about new ethical questions. Would you let a robot diagnose your disease and indirectly decide the best possible treatment for your health? Will the position of a traditional doctor become obsolete in the following years?