Dan Cerruti, VP Watson Commercialization, IBM
(c)2012 Pinar Ozger pinar@pinarozger.com

IBM’s Watson will team up with Memorial Sloan Kettering this fall and plans to launch in a handful of cancer care centers this year, but Dan Cerutti, IBM’s GM of Watson Commercialization, said today at GigaOM Structure that Watson could be used in other fields too. Besides healthcare, it’s already working with the government and financial services industries.

“The opportunities are limitless,” Cerutti said told GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham. Watson’s cloud-based services can be layered on top of any application, but “you want to focus on important decisions where the information you have” is less than what’s available. “If a human being was able to read everything that was relevant and remember it,” Cerutti said, “would they make a better decision once in awhile? We think so. Watson can do that and sit at your side as an advisor.”

Does that mean patients will go in and see Watson instead of their doctor? No, “you’ll see your clinician,” Cerutti said. “Watson is behind the scenes and can present to the doc some options of what might be ailing you.”

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