As most of the nation knows at this point, IBM laid off an undisclosed number of employees from its Watson Health group, with at least 40 workers cut from its Cleveland office.
The full ripple effect of this “resource action” is yet to be seen. That said, it has already caused many healthcare executives to ponder what impact this will have on AI innovation and adoption in the risk-averse healthcare market. See what these healthcare thought leaders have to say:
Jay Anders, M.D., chief medical officer of Medicomp Systems (Chantilly, VA)
“While it’s never ideal for employees to lose their jobs, it’s unfortunately all too common when companies acquire many other entities without considering how or why they fit together. In the face of operational realities, that failure to integrate often leads to massive cost-cutting efforts like layoffs. But there is also a larger lesson in the IBM Watson Health announcement about the role of AI in healthcare. AI in healthcare is not a quick fix. Healthcare is full of clinical complexities, which often means that AI doesn’t work as anticipated and generally fails to produce the results seen in other industries. AI in healthcare requires a deeper infrastructure and a strong foundation of curated clinical content to fuel its outputs. It requires discrete data points to run the algorithms and—without that data—even the most sophisticated algorithms are incredibly flawed. Further, without that data, the “innovation” adds cost with little value or return on investment —especially considering that patients are not willing to let AI replace a physician and diagnose them. Even more importantly, trained physicians don’t need help from an artificial intelligence engine like IBM Watson 90 to 95 percent of the time. In healthcare, physicians are still the smartest computer in the room, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Yet, at our core, we remain confident that with the right data, AI holds incredible promise for healthcare. It’s simply not as easy as IBM hoped it would be.”
Elizabeth Marshall, M.D., MBA, director of clinical analytics at Linguamatics
“IBM is an incredible company. They were the creator of a mainframe computer that was the background of the Apollo Mission that landed us on the moon. Over the years, they’ve continued to create some amazing products. As anyone in our industry knows, healthcare is complicated and requires flexible platforms that can conform to the unique needs of individual healthcare systems. IBM Watson is a complex platform, but its successful deployment requires the large-scale pairing of data scientists with medical experts who often struggle to speak one another’s trade languages. In addition, implementations are lengthy and require huge budgets. The layoff news is sad— especially for the individuals impacted— but certainly not surprising.”
Scott McFarland, president, HealthBI
“You want to root for Big Blue, but this latest news is another example of Watson Health making headlines for all the wrong reasons. It also stands in stark contrast to the success that many upstart companies have achieved in helping healthcare with data-driven tools. We’re seeing these tools identify high-risk patients in time to prevent another hospitalization. We’re seeing these tools close gaps in care for people with severe mental illnesses who previously haven’t seen a primary care doctor in years. We’re seeing these tools coordinate better and less costly care for millions of Medicare enrollees. These gains are ultimately the bigger story about where we’re at with data-driven healthcare. That and the fact that they’re coming from small and relatively unknown companies.”
Gregg Church, president, 4medica
"Although technically we compete with IBM in the patient identity matching space, it gives us no pleasure to learn that so many people will be losing their jobs. In fact, we think that if there was more collaboration and less competition in healthcare, everyone would be better off, not just the shareholders. If you look at where the real wins are happening in healthcare, it’s in those instances where data, systems and people are working in frictionless harmony.”