What is Watson?As a cognitive technology, Watson is a natural extension of what humans can do at their best.Watson is a cognitive technology that processes information more like a human than a computer -- by understanding natural language, generating hypotheses based on evidence, and learning as it goes. And learn it does. Watson "gets smarter" in three ways: by being taught by its users, by learning from prior interactions, and by being presented with new information. This means organizations can more fully understand and use the data that surrounds them, and use that data to make better decisions.IBM_cdc659ca-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6abHealthcare IndustryHelping doctors identify treatment options -- IBM Watson for Oncology, trained by Memorial Sloan Kettering, helps oncologists identify individualized evidence-based treatment options. It analyzes a patient’s medical information against a vast array of data, including expert training from MSK physicians, cancer case histories, established treatment guidelines, and published research to provide individualized, ranked, evidence based treatment options at the point of care.Watson extracts patient case attributes and provides supporting rationale for the treatment options.Watson at Work: Healthcare and business professionals share their perspectives on the promise of Watson's transformative technology, and its ability to completely change how patients interact with caregivers and consumers with brands. Financial IndustryHelping planners recommend better investments -- Major financial institutions are already working with Watson to infuse additional intelligence into their business processes. Watson is tackling data-intensive challenges across the financial services sector, including banking, financial planning and investing.DBS Bank's relationship managers advise their wealth-management clients by analyzing large volumes of such complex data as research reports, product information, and customer profiles. DBS will apply Watson Engagement Advisor to analyze the relationship managers’ growing corpus of investment knowledge, identify connections to customers' needs, offer better advice and determine customers’ best financial options.RetailersHelping retailers transform customer relationships -- Watson's cognitive computing capabilities of analyzing massive amounts of unstructured data can help retailers reinvent their decision-making processes around pricing and purchasing. Today, a retailer using Watson can find insights in the data that might have escaped their notice, rather than relying on gut instinct.Further, Watson's unique ability to understand and answer questions in natural language makes it a cost-effective and scalable tool for analyzing and responding precisely to social sentiment, such as social interactions, blogs and customer reviews. And like a human being, Watson learns from experience and improves with feedback.Watson can help draw insights from reams of unstructured information to help deliver a better experience. When a retailer understands its customers' needs in greater detail, it can offer those customers more personalized and more satisfying experiences, increasing loyalty and conversions.Public SectorHelping government help its citizens -- Cognitive computing can help improve the service of the public sector in several ways, improving on slow and manual decision-making processes by employing such capabilities as decision-management, predictive and content analytics, planning, discovery, information integration and data management.And Watson learns like a human. As it refines its own knowledge from its findings in vast sets of data and its interactions with the employees using it, it helps public employees improve process and policy.Watson helps deliver personal service to citizens navigating complex processes. From these interactions, Watson learns the priorities of the public and helps inform policies that serve those interests. And with threats to security an ongoing problem, Watson can uncover patterns of activity that can help an agency interpret and address abnormal usage that may suggest an emerging problem.Better decisions by individuals and organizations._cdc65b64-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6abTo extend what humans can do._cdc65c4a-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6abLanguageRead and understand natural language._cdc65d08-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6ab1Watson can read and understand natural language, important in analyzing unstructured data that make up as much as 80 percent of data today._cdc65dc6-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6abAnswersGenerate hypotheses and parse relevant evidence to evaluate responses to questions._cdc65e84-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6ab2Hypothesis Generation -- When asked a question, Watson relies on hypothesis generation and evaluation to rapidly parse relevant evidence and evaluate responses from disparate data._cdc65f42-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6abLearningGet smarter by tracking feedback._cdc66032-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6ab3Dynamic Learning -- Through repeated use, Watson literally gets smarter by tracking feedback from its users and learning from both successes and failures._cdc660f0-dba8-11e4-90bf-f8b16abdd6ab2015-04-05http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/what-is-watson.htmlOwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net