Doctor in your pocket

SUE DUNLEVY COMPUTERS are beating doctors at diagnosing melanoma, and they can also categorise your personality type or even tell if you are pregnant – and now they are putting a doctor in your pocket.

Your smartphone is about to become a mobile doctor providing instant personalised health advice, reminding you about health checks, storing your medical records and helping you manage your illnesses.

It will make medical appointments for you when you needs a Pap smear or skin check, order your prescription medication when it is due to run out, allow you to attach blood test and X-ray results and remind you when kids’ vaccinations need updating.

IBM is developing an artificial intelligence called Watson that works like the human brain and responds to natural language, and it has proved better than doctors at diagnosing melanoma.

Australian tech wizards and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners are using Watson to develop a new computerised health concierge called Health&.

The record will link with the government’s My Health Record system from next year.

The service will provide personalised health reminders and information that suits each individual.

The free online service will collect medical test data, pro- vide an easy-to-use library of health information that can be accessed by voice commands on a smartphone, and provide answers in natural language.

Oncologists are already using Watson to diagnose and treat cancer, in the US a law firm is using it to do the work or paralegals and find relevant case law for bankruptcy law.

IBM health industry technical leader David Yip says every year there are 700,000 scientific articles published and it is impossible for any human to absorb the information fast enough.

A skin cancer detection program developed by IBM is now 95 per cent accurate at detecting skin cancer compared to doctors, who are accurate between 74 and 85 per cent of the time.