STAT+: Inside the fall of Watson Health: How IBM’s audacious plan to ‘change the face of health care’ with AI fell apart
It was a summer day in 2018, and the outlook could hardly have seemed more bleak for Watson Health, IBM’s self-described “moonshot” to revolutionize medicine with artificial intelligence. The operation was reeling from layoffs and sharply critical media reports, and several of its product lines had failed to meet revenue targets.
But Lisa Rometty, a vice president of the business, painted an entirely different picture at a global meeting of hundreds of employees by video conference. She proclaimed that a business trip left her “feeling on top of the world” as she described a product the company marketed as helping to save lives, even though there was no evidence to back up that claim.
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