IBM has announced three additional companies are developing apps using Watson's big data and natural language processing capabilities.
One of these companies is Modernizing Medicine, the developer of the Electronic Medical Assistant iPad app that helps dermatologists incorporate evidence-based practices into care. The company's new, Watson-powered app, schEMA, will take this capability further by allowing physicians to ask questions and use Watson's language and data-mining abilities to comb through published literature and studies to quickly find an answer.
"We aren't taking the doctor out of the driver's seat," Daniel Cane, CEO and cofounder of Modernizing Medicine, told the Miami Herald. "We are going to make Watson the ultimate research assistant and the ultimate collaborator to help determine a course of treatment."
The Watson technology "learns" quickly enough that the app will be a useful tool right out of the gate for physicians seeking to incorporate more evidence-based practices into their care delivery, said Mr. Cane. "Watson gets incredibly good at conversational style questions and answers," he told the Herald. "So when our dermatologist asked about a certain treatment … Watson can say here is the answer and here's the journal it came from and here's the citations, and with one touch on the iPad, it can all be cited in the patient's record."
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