Everyone remembers the IBM Watson project. M.D. Anderson was a partner in that adventure into 'artificial intelligence" and machine learning. Here was the first large scale attempt at integrating M.L. into a clinical setting.
The oncology department of M.D. Anderson performs many clinical trials for new drugs. There is a constant flow of drugs in the developmental pipeline. The combinations and permutations are huge and the use of M.L. in the process looked promising. The partnership between IBM and M.D. Anderson lasted briefly. IBM did it's best, however, the clinicians terminated the project due to critical incompatibility between Watson (software) and Anderson. That project seems to be dormant, or at least neither partner has much to say about it publicly.
Physicians have been and are still skeptical of Artificial Intelligence. The inexperience and lack of education in what A.I. can and cannot accomplish are part of the problem. Knowledgable people know that A.I. can only do what it is taught to do using algorithms and a large database of information, such as images, and/or raw data, charts, and natural language. Computers continue to be as stupid as they ever were. It remains doubtful if a computer will ever duplicate the human brain. Humans are creative, computers do not have that ability. Regardless of how much they 'think' has anyone seen a. computer create a new idea? Can a computer have an 'aha!" Do they have an epiphany? Can a computer dream? The answer may lie in the movie iRobot where Sonny discloses human emotion spontaneously when he becomes angry. He did not recognize that he had a human emotion.
Despite my reservations, large companies such as IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Apple pave the way for machine learning in smart home devices, smartphones. Software developed by Amazon is being licensed to all varieties of devices manufactured by Sony, Bose, Samsung, and others. This feature has been around for at least 20 years used by Nuance in the original "Dragon Speaking" dictation software for entering text into word processors. Nuance now offers a new iteration, " Dragon Ambient eXperience
IBM has lagged for ten years in its effort to enter the health IT space in a meaningful way (Paddington).
Several rumblings are occurring in IBM's financial structure according to the Wall Street Journal. IBM's lackluster performance in cloud computing against rivals such as AWS, Google Cloud, Apple cloud, and even Dell Cloud have IBM considering a financial split of their IT to develop revenue flow to support such a venture.
Such splits have been disappointing. Boyar Research, in a study last year of 246 spinoffs, found that in most cases the outcome was disappointing. Such companies generally did well in their first year, the New York investment research firm said, but after five years, just over a third were performing better than the S&P 500 index. Parent companies mostly did poorly in the five years after spinoffs, the study found, and on average shares in the parent trailed the stock index. IBM has experience with shedding businesses to reinvent itself. The company was a pioneer in personal computers but exited under pressure from more-nimble rivals such as Dell Technologies Inc. IBM sold its PC business to China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. in 2005 for $1.25 billion, a deal widely regarded as shrewd.
IBM unloaded its semiconductor manufacturing business to the chipmaker Globalfoundries in 2015, an acknowledgment, some analysts said, that it didn’t have the scale or focus to compete in that arena.
Now IBM is exiting a business in a market that has uncertain fortunes. IT services, which include infrastructure services, will decline by 6.8% this year, although the sector is set to rebound next year, according to the research firm Gartner. Mr. Krishna said the business IBM is spinning off will be the largest player in the field and will be vying for a market worth $500 billion, with operations in more than 100 countries.
Measuring success looking at stock prices obviously disregards its value in the workspace. Many outstanding products languish in the stock exchange while delivering real value to the users.
Health IT is often a risky investment. It is a highly specialized area and market pressures change rapidly. Mergers and acquisitions occur almost at the speed of light.
ref: This article is a synthesis of numerous sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment