5 ms·

Actually, this seems like the perfect opportunity for pharma companies to "help" in creating the database. That's actually what they are already doing when pit

• aheilbut 15y ago
  In the end, the power is going to be with the payors, who are plenty savvy themselves, not the pharma companies. Drugs are a relatively small part (10-15%) of the overall cost of healthcare.
• arohner 15y ago
  Most new drugs today win on marketing, rather than efficacy. Once you have a system like watson, it's rather trivial to do the expected value calculation of "This treatment has an X% chance of working, and costs Y. The competing treatment has X'%, and costs Y'." As long as that data is available to patients (and it should be), I'm with the parent poster, this will make it harder to pad treatments.
  • btilly 15y ago
    The customers for the software are the hospitals that people go to, not the insurance companies or the patients. I guarantee you that the hospitals will prefer whatever option results in the best possible financial outcomes for themselves.