Artificial Intelligence is Leading a Revolution in Medicine

In early August, IBM announced that it will acquire Merge Healthcare Inc., a company that sells systems that help medical professionals access and store medical images. This move is a critical step in IBM's plan to put AI to work medically by training its Watson software to identify maladies like heart disease and cancer. Merge is valuable to IBM because it owns 30 billion images, including computerized tomography, X-rays, and magnetic-resonance-imaging scans. The company can use these images in its deep learning training program. IBM is hoping that the same kind of software that lets Flickr recognize your face or a dog in your photos can help Watson identify symptoms of diseases.