IBM Watson: Does artificial intelligence ever replace a doctor?

Watson-recommended treatments resemble those of physicians in most cases. In India specifically, Watson diagnosed and treated 96,4% of the time the same as medical teams. The data were presented by IBM at an American Society of Clinical Oncology event.

In 126 cervical cancer patients, the machine made the same decision as doctors 81% of the time. The performance was better in rectal cancer, with 92,7% agreement between humans and the IBM robot.

IBM Watson improving medicine

The company believes that the difference in performance in these situations is even desired. When Watson differs from doctors, there may be chances for greater learning, whether for professionals or for the machine.

In South Korea, the equivalence rate between IBM Watson and local medicine is only 49% for stomach cancer. In this case, the disparity is due to the oncology guidelines between the Asian country and the center where Watson Health is trained.

One question, for now, remains in the air. Are the treatments prescribed by Watson more effective than those prescribed by doctors? It will still take some time for the data to be sufficient to answer it. But, the hope is that the machine will be as good or better than a human in the near future.