‘Dr Watson’ all set to join doctors at Manipal Hospital

Cancer is one disease that all the current medical science and technology has not been able to tame fully, and it is the one disease that inspires dread and despair, not just in patients and their caregivers, but even in the doctors who treat patients with the many forms of the disease.

Now, oncologists at Manipal Hospital may soon have some help in objectively deciding the most optimal lines of treatment for their patient – from a machine that has an infinite ability to ‘learn’ but no emotion. It’s IBM’s supercomputer Watson. More specifically, Watson for Oncology, which IBM developed in collaboration with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

What can a machine offer a qualified and experienced doctor A million people are diagnosed with cancer and have to be treated every year in India, and the number is growing. India has only one oncologist for every 1,600 cancer patients, and no number of new medical colleges and hospitals can bring up the number of oncologists to a comfortable level. Crucially, no individual doctor can master all the new knowledge that is becoming available around the world on the disease – in just the past year, some 44,000 oncology research papers were published. But ‘Dr. Watson’ can and does, thanks to machine learning technology. When a doctor needs any tiny bit of all that knowledge, the machine can deliver it to her in seconds. In seconds. Without emotion.

“It’s like Dr. Spock in Star Trek, who thinks like a machine and lacks any emotion but gives the best decision options”, Dr.S.P. Somashekhar, chairman of the Oncology Group at Manipal Hospital. “It has tremendous ability to change the picture of healthcare”.

Cancer diagnosis is a constantly evolving field and the line of treatment is different from one patient to another, Dr. Somashekhar adds, explaining the myriad decisions that confront doctors on a daily basis. When Manipal Hospital put ‘Dr. Watson’ through a test, it was able to find the correct line of treatment for even the most complex cases in seconds.

“An oncologist’s worst nightmare is when a patient comes in for a second opinion,” Dr. Somashekhar said. “The line of treatment might need a change, depending on what you read, a second opinion from another doctor, a previous case study, etc. Watson simplifies all that and gives you the best line of treatment, with its success rate and effectiveness.”

“In simple terms, Watson is an advanced and reliable second opinion option that oncologists can refer to,” said Dr H. Sudarshan Ballal, chairman of Manipal Health Enterprises Private Limited.