[gmarx]

One the things I have read it is intended for (and which strikes me as a plausible use of the technology) is to read the medical literature and direct the physician to it when relevant issues arise in patient care. The example they gave was a doc considering medication A for a patient who was allergic to medication B. The doc learned long ago that there was a high correlation between bad reactions to these two drugs so he was surprised when Watson recommended drug B anyway. Watson then gave him the link to a paper from 6 months previous debunking the correlation. I think Watson could be very helpful if this ever works reliably but I see several difficult problems.

Number one is, how does Watson judge the quality of a journal article when the overwhelming majority of them suck?

[et2o]

It is almost always poor practice to make clinical decisions based upon a single paper. Medicine is really complicated.