IBM, in it for the long haul, is betting big on Watson

Adapting Watson technology to industries like health care and manufacturing, IBM insists, was always going to be a long-term commitment — and one that began shortly after Watson beat human champions on the quiz show “Jeopardy” in 2011.

IBM is collaborating with Quest Diagnostics, the medical laboratory company, to offer gene sequencing and Watson diagnostic analysis, as a cloud service, to oncologists treating cancer patients, starting Monday.

“This is the broad commercialization of Watson in oncology,” said John E. Kelly, a senior vice president who oversees IBM’s research labs and the Watson business.

The technology, IBM executives say, has the potential to make precision medicine and tailored therapies available to millions of cancer patients instead of the small number now treated at elite medical centers with genomics expertise.

The new genomics service, IBM executives say, is one step in the company’s march to build a so-called ecosystem of corporate partners and software developers that use Watson technology.

For a big company, Watson can provide not just software but also IBM consultants helping a retailer, for example, use the technology to customize marketing and improve customer service.

The market — defined as AI-related hardware, software and services — will surge from $8 billion this year to $47 billion by 2020, predicts IDC, a research firm.

All the major technology companies are investing aggressively in AI software, including companies beyond IBM like Salesforce, SAP and Oracle that focus on business customers.

[...] consumer Internet companies with large cloud computing businesses, analysts say, are most likely to build the equivalent of operating systems for AI — the so-called platforms on which most developers write applications.

IBM has acquired industry expertise and proprietary data sources, in addition to supplying AI platform tools and technology.

[...] it has spent more than $4 billion buying a handful of companies with vast stores of medical data such as billing records, patient histories, and X-ray and MRI images.