Cyber-mediators in ADR future

I was struck by a pair of popular news stories that unfolded in the second half of February that, together, provide perhaps an unsettling glimpse into the future. First, as many of you likely heard, IBM computer “Watson” made headlines by defeating its human whiz opponents on “Jeopardy” and bagging a $1 million prize.1 Just over a week later, the world’s first robot marathon began in Osaka, Japan, where five battery-charged, bipedal robotic runners embarked-unassisted, by the way-on a 26.2-mile course to test their durability and maneuverability.2

Watson’s story became even more intriguing when, shortly after their game-show victory, IBM, along with Nuance Healthcare, announced that a joint venture between them “will combine IBM’s question-answering, language-processing, and machine-learning capabilities with Nuance’s … speech-recognition and clinical-understanding solutions to assist physicians in patient diagnosis and treatment.”3 Additionally, Columbia University and the University of Maryland will collaborate with IBM-Nuance with a goal of allowing doctors to query a “cybernetic assistant” and basically, together, create an interactive information exchange between physician and computer that could very well revolutionize the delivery of personalized medical care.4