High-tech cancer care proves that to err isn’t just human

From Jeopardy! champ to doctor… no degree or license required!

I’m talking about the most familiar computer with a name since Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey — IBM’s quiz-show marvel, Watson.

Since winning against two of the top-earning Jeopardy! champs, Watson has gone on to a career in medicine, working behind the scenes at major hospitals to figure out the best treatments for patients suffering from various types of cancer.

It might sound like a medical marvel… the evolution of super computers… if not for the fact that to err isn’t just human!

It turns out that Watson has made some serious mistakes, ones that could have resulted in disaster if they hadn’t been caught by a real doctor.

When Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute (which specializes in personalizing medical technology), was asked about some of these errors, he noted that the “whole idea” of Watson was to improve “safety and quality.”

And if that’s not the case, it’s “extremely worrisome,” he said.

It seems as though that’s very much not the case! Watson, it turns out, is still far from ready to practice medicine.

This tells us that no matter how miraculous the technology you’re offered as a patient appears to be, human beings — with all of their imperfections — are still the true champions when it comes to saving lives.

‘Unsafe and incorrect’

In the case of a 65-year-old lung cancer patient with an additional severe bleeding problem, Watson royally messed up.

Along with chemotherapy, “Dr. Watson” recommended the drug bevacizumab, which comes with a black-box warning that it shouldn’t be given to patients with… severe bleeding.

Yikes! Doesn’t this trivia wiz know how to Google?

That was just one of the  many examples of “unsafe and incorrect treatment recommendations” made by the computer that were documented in an internal report put together by the head of IBM Watson Health, according to STAT News.

Also included were comments from doctors working in hospitals that that use Watson’s services. They indicate that Watson’s assessments are “often inaccurate” and raise “serious questions” about how it was groomed for the job.

A physician at one Florida hospital even went so far as to use a profane term to describe Watson’s performance, adding, “We can’t use it for most cases.”

Those concerns, of course, were not intended to be publicly aired. Nor were findings that what appears to be an unlimited source of methodically analyzed information is, in fact, coming from a surprisingly limited number of human programmers.

Along with that, Watson relies on input that’s sometimes purely hypothetical, rather than based on real-life cases. As it turns out, company engineers and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center doctors relied in part on “synthetic” patients in giving the system its “training,” which was done by only one or two doctors for each type of cancer and actually involved a relatively small number of cases.

To hear the way IBM tells it, however, Watson is doing just as well in clinical practice as on Jeopardy!. According to IBM’s spin, everything is “going fabulously” with Watson… and the system is fast becoming the go-to source for determining how to fight hard-to-treat cancers.

But we now know otherwise – and if you or a loved one are being treated at a hospital or specialty cancer center, you can’t automatically assume that you’re getting the benefit of an actual specialist’s knowledge!

And you may just want to ask if the treatments you’re being prescribed were recommended by Watson.

If so, it might be in your best interest to get a second opinion – one from an actual human doctor with genuine real-life experience with cases like yours.

Of course, people also make mistakes, and that includes plenty of doctors! Perhaps that’s why the idea of Watson seemed so appealing, because computers should be perfect, right?

Now, however, the truth is out. Watson isn’t some medical magician, and the computer is only going to be as good as what his programmers decide to put into ‘him.’

But even the most sophisticated machine (filled with the contents of thousands and thousands of medical books) won’t be able to conjure up intuition, compassion, and that undefinable extra known as the human touch.

“Report: IBM Watson delivered ‘unsafe and inaccurate’ cancer recommendations” Fink Densford, July 25, 2018, Mass Device, massdevice.com