Analysis of the Failure of IBM ' s Watson; Vertical Integration Backfires

I have blogged periodically about IBM's Watson which has never lived up to its early expectations (see:Scandal at M.D. Anderson -- Operating Loss and Then Watson Deep-Sixed).Forbes recently published a piece about Watson with an analysis of this failure (see:IBM Watson And The Value Of Open) and below is an excerpt from it:...[W]ith the passage of more time, it must be said that IBM Watson has not delivered the results that IBM expected. One particular moment was the decision of MD Anderson ’s Cancer Center to withdraw from its partnership with IBM in 2017. An internal audit by the University of Texas found that the university had spent over $62 million dollars (not counting internal staff time) and did not meet its goals....While many factors were no doubt at work here, the shift in IBM ’s focus from cognitive computing to cloud computing is certainly a part of this change....There are technical reasons [that IBM has not succeeded with Watson including]...the rapid and unexpected progress of other forms of AI, such as deep learning. But another likely reason has to do with how IBM took its then-leading technology to market.IBM commercialized Watson in health care with a vertically integrated strategy.All of the activities from the laboratory to the customer were delivered by IBM itself. There were no third party system integrators. There were no APIs for others to use to link to and build upon Watson. There was no software development kit, or open source ...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: AI Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Research Quality of Care Source Type: blogs