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On Cancer: Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Collaboration with IBM Watson Featured on CBS This Morning

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By Media Staff  |  Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Pictured: Mark Kris Thoracic Oncology Service Chief Mark Kris

The Tuesday, July 9, episode of CBS This Morning included a segment about a new tool to help improve medical decision making, built on the supercomputer IBM Watson. Mark G. Kris, Chief of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Thoracic Oncology Service, and Carol Jaxel, one of Dr. Kris’s patients, were interviewed about the benefits this new technology can bring to cancer care.

Dr. Kris and a team of physicians and analysts at Memorial Sloan-Kettering have been “training” IBM Watson for more than a year to help medical professionals choose the best diagnostic and treatment plans for individual cancer patients. The system is based on a vast amount of clinical data and research as well as wisdom gleaned from decades of expertise in treating cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

One of the goals of this project is to improve the quality of care delivered to people with cancer no matter where they are located. The need for the new technology arises from the increasing complexity of cancer treatment and the fact that most cancer patients are not treated at specialized medical centers.

IBM Watson, which became famous after its appearance on the TV game show Jeopardy! in 2011, when it beat two all-time champions, is capable of learning with every encounter, continually getting smarter.

Watch the CBS This Morning segment.

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Comments

Submitted by Tom Watson  |  Monday, July 15, 2013 - 10:58 AM.
Train the computer to do the job of a doctor, and in time computers will REPLACE doctors. Your IBM computer will get "smarter" than doctors, and it will claim the authority in medical decision making in due time. We have robots in the OR already - Da Vinci ROBOTIC SURGERY. In the future human beings will have to fight with man made artificial intelligance to win back their humanness. You are welcoming artificial intelligence and arificial beings in the SACRED space of human BEINGS. Read this as an illustration of what is expecting us here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near, and think twice before welcoming robots into our human lives. We are what we do!
Submitted by Allen Douma MD  |  Thursday, July 25, 2013 - 1:59 PM.
MSKCC's work with IBM/Watson is truly world changing in incredibly positive ways. As with any better tool, as it improves quality and efficiency, some will need to adapt to take full advantage. Those who do will be the leaders of our future in medicine. We need to communicate to all audiences to best set the stage for optimum use of this new tool.

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