IBM Watson And The Precarious Balance Between Medicine And Marketing

Nothing kills a bad idea faster than good advertising. Yet, the diffusion of information into a system can be essential--especially in medicine. So the balance between the kind of stuff that "sticks to the roof of your customer's brain" and valuable information can be tricky and even contradictory. For most of us, the introduction of Watson's skill set wasn't as a peer-reviewed paper published in a top academic journal--it was a guy name Ken Jennings and the popular TV game show Jeopardy. After a winning streak of 74 shows, Jennings took on IBM Watson and the rest is history.