Can a Supercomputer Suggest the Best Cancer Treatment?

In 2011, a supercomputer won 1 million on Jeopardy! In 2016, that same supercomputer is tackling a challenge quantified not in millions of dollars but in millions of cancer patients. The goal is to use Watson's natural language processing to mine the medical literature and a patient's records to provide treatment advice. And this month the Watson computer system is drastically expanding its reach--from one hospital in Thailand to six in India and a planned 21 more in China. This instantiation of Watson, dubbed Watson for Oncology, is an artificial intelligence system that has access to millions of pages of medical textbooks and journal articles.