IBM's Watson has already proven itself. It is better than humans! So now from playing Jeopardy, its next job is to fix the shortage of doctors.

The other odd jobs for Watson just didn't stick. From being a pastry chef to answering phones, now it has picked up a new skill: a medical one. Watson scanned exam books to learn the basic principles of diagnosis. It matches symptoms with other medical data it has stored.

The supercomputer doctor is going to be unleashed on the Cleveland Clinic, where over the course of three years, the computer will be trawling patient records and pointing doctors to important data and perhaps even use it to diagnose people.

The idea is fantastic, since doctors are usually overworked. So far, Watson has been put to work summarizing medical records, then giving doctors a summary of the patient's medical history. According to Dr. Neil Mehta from the Cleveland Clinic:
IBM admits that medical records are fairly dirty as data sets go because there's often missing data or some strange alternative terms in use. But once that's ironed out, we're guessing it would definitely be worth a try.

Will we be diagnosed by supercomputers in the future? [Verge]