IBM’s Watson from Jeopardy could fight disease

IBM’s Watson from Jeopardy could fight disease

It's the supercomputer that stumped Jeopardy legends like Ken Jennings -- and now it could be used in a partnership with CVS to fight chronic diseases in a rather amazing way.

Computer superpower IBM and pharmacy CVS are teaming up using the supercomputer Watson — best known from its Jeopardy days — to better manage patient care.

But the effort is not without its concerns, mainly over concerns about privacy, but there is hope that this partnership using IBM’s Watson computing engine to improve care management services that will better improve the quality of life for patients, according to an InformationWeek report.

The partnership was announced this week and is aimed at allowing health care practitioners to use health information sources such as health records and claims information and fitness devices to figure out how to better serve patients.

That way, those who suffer from long-term illnesses to keep using their prescribed treatments and slash medical costs in the process, which can expand to insurers serving employers and health plans.

The companies say they want to focus on individuals with declining health who might benefit from these proactive efforts.

The program powered by Watson would push patients to seek out healthier lifestyle — that would include sticking to the medicines they were prescribed and improving their own lifestyles.

CVS said in a statement that this partnership would allow the company to use advanced technologies that could help health care providers to improve the health of their members, as well as lower the management costs.

Watson is a famous computer produced by IBM that was specifically developed to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy back in 2011 against former winners like Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson won the prize, which was $1 million. The computer has access to millions of pages of content with terabytes of disk storage.

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