[nkw]

I think that is what the above poster is asking and the root of the original inquiry. Most press and IBM originated information about Watson reads like vague sales collateral or PR puff. The first link I get on google when I type in "watson" is titled "IBM Watson - The platform for cognitive business" [1] which is pretty meaningless. I click "What is Watson?" and get this page [2] which says "IBM Watson is a technology platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data" which is great but that could describe anything from Siri to Google to Yelp to Microsoft Word and Excel.

The above post saying "it helps with cancer research and patient care" is the perfect example of this. Yeah it sounds good, but what is it doing? Keeping patients warm? Writing publications for researchers? Churning through raw experimental data? Rationing healthcare (er, making treatment decisions) with sophisticated mathematics? Generating a quick summary of new research papers for treaters? I have no idea..

It may be super cool technology, but IBM has done an impressive job of completely obfuscating its nature and capabilities with sales speak gobbledygook.

[1] http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/

[2] http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/what-is-wat...

[tormeh]

The PR speak a while ago was that it would sift through research papers and books looking for relevant answers to a query - a much smarter Google Scholar. Nobody can keep track of all the cancer research, apparently, so machine analysis makes sense, IBM says.

[ChristianBundy]

Right, but is that what it's doing? It sounds like PR is all that exists.

[fabiobruna]

I've worked with some people from IBM, doing some cancer analyses with Watson. I think the goal was to compare US/EU results(cancer get different treatments in different regions I guess). We "fed" Watson with actual patient data / diagnostics(getting/selection data was my job) and reviewed the resulting suggested treatment plans. Watson would suggest different plans, with results stats, links to pubmed, datasets etc. I'm no medic, but it looked nice. I wouldn't mind a "second opinion" like that.

[FatAmericanDev]

Keeping patients warm, they actually put a bed in the server room.