How AI Can Tap into the Collective Mind to Transform Healthcare

In 2013, IBM sold the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center on an audacious idea: that a single AI-powered platform, IBM Watson, could lend a digital hand to battle one of mankind's most abominable diseases--cancer. In less than four years, the trailblazing moonshot fell apart. Yet even as Watson stumbled, it provided valuable insight--and a powerful peek ahead--at how machine learning technologies could one day supplement and revolutionize almost everything doctors do. The question isn't if AI is coming to medicine. At its best, machine learning can tap into the collective experience of nearly all clinicians, providing a single doctor with the experience of millions of similar cases to make informed decisions.