Why do we seek external advice for our health? In part, we expect providers to know more than us. This is partially through the experience of treating other patients that have had similar struggles, and also by having the background knowledge and mental data storage to make decisions that will guide us toward our goals. So, what if there was an external system that could help guide the decisions that providers make to improve our health?

Artificial intelligence is going to change the way that clinicians diagnose and treat, for the better. Any human work has the risk of error and knowledge can be variable between practitioners. Patients oftentimes don’t expect to find their providers searching their conditions or related questions on Google, but the truth is that this is common practice. Seeing a condition for the first time, with a client expecting you to provide guidance for them and keep them safe is difficult and sometimes external resources are necessary. In my first years of practice, Google Scholar and the search engine became my close alliances while I navigated many new diagnoses and patient questions.

IBM Watson seeks to provide an external network of both data and experience. It is growing to become an amazing resource for answering questions, compiling data, and helping drive logical decisions in medicine. A large cloud of data storage that learns as it compiles more data, this promises to be a close resource for clinicians by making our decisions more precise and valuable for patients. Watson’s storage allows for a diverse amount of data storage, including personal data along with genomic and clinical research. When searching for information, it will be extremely valuable and efficient to have all this information stored in one known resource.

Quality care is a combination of data and experience. Both are extremely valuable, and the combination is what makes medical decisions supreme. Without research we are unable to learn as a society and defend the decisions that we make. And it is through experience, working with thousands of people, that we begin to see patterns and apply them to our practice. People often ask, ‘have you seen this before?’ It comforts them when the answer is yes, and this is because experience gives us the power of efficiency. With a resource such as IBM Watson, providers will have the benefits of current research and data to pair with our experience.