What's Next, Watson?

The three-day "man versus machine" Jeopardy competition between the game show's all-time champions and IBM's Watson computer concluded last night with Watson's victory.

Contestant Ken Jennings finished in second-place with his Final Jeopardy question "Who is Stoker?," adding a parenthetic "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords."

Now that the fun is over the big question is what's next for Watson?

According to today's Wall Street Journal:

"IBM is trying to commercialize Watson now. On Thursday the company plans to announce a research agreement to develop commercial applications of the Watson technology for the health-care industry. Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine are joining the research effort."

Computerworld reports:

"IBM's computer could very well herald a whole new era in medicine. That's the vision of IBM engineers and Dr. Eliot Siegel, professor and vice chairman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine's department of diagnostic radiology.

"Siegel and his colleagues at the University of Maryland, as well as at Columbia University Medical Center, are working with IBM engineers to figure out the best ways for Watson to work hand-in-hand with physicians and medical specialists.

"Siegel, who refers to the computer not as the champ of Jeopardy but as 'Dr. Watson,' says he expects the computer, which can respond to questions with answers instead of data and spread sheets, to radically improve doctors' care of their patients.  'There is a major challenge in medicine today,' Siegel told Computerworld.' There's an incredible amount of information in a patient's medial record. It's in the form of abbreviations and short text. There's a tremendous amount of redundancy and a lot of it is written in a free-form fashion like a blog or text.'

'As a physician or radiologist, it might take me 10 or 20 or 60 minutes or more just to understand what's in a patient's medical record,' he said.  Within a year, Siegel hopes that 'Dr. Watson' will change all of that. Watson is expected to be able to take a patient's electronic medical records, digest them, summarize them for the doctor and point out any causes for concern, highlighting anything abnormal and warning about potential drug interactions.

'It offers the potential to usher in a whole new generation of medicine,' Siegel said. 'If all Dr. Watson did was allow me to organize electronic medical records and bring to my attention what's most important and summarize it, that would be incredibly valuable to me.  Even small things that Watson can do will change the way I, and my colleagues, practice medicine,' he said."

How else can Watson's technology apply to business, government and society?  Today at 11:30 am ET on ted.com, you can tweet questions to the hashtags #ibmwatson and #askwatson in a moderated chat.

Well done Watson, you've made your namesake and all IBMers proud.

IBM founder Thomas J. Watson