IBM is trying to find ways to help consumers and medical equipment so that data collection, analysis, and feedback can be run properly. Big Blue, on Monday had said that the new Watson unit will work with Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) so that the connection between the mobile device may occur.

Watson is IBM’s artificial intelligence system that can process information more humane when compared with a regular computer. Experts have predicted that one day; Watson will replace some aspects of the work of doctors. This is what called as medical revolutionary.

The win on Jeopardy and the announcement of this healthcare initiative for Watson has led some in the media to feel Watson can actually replace the diagnosing and treating physicians do with their patients — a CNN anchor even postulated that “Watson could do everything but operate” .

Does Watson have the potential to be helpful in healthcare? Yes, but only if we understand its limitations. The following exchange between Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and Surgeon Atul Gawande highlights the problems with using computer based algorithms in medicine.

Last year at the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) meeting, Google’s Schmidt was befuddled as to why physicians hadn’t adopted the use of computer algorithms to diagnose patients. He stated:

“So when you show up at the doctor with some set of symptoms, in my ideal world what would happen is that the doctor would type in the symptoms he or she also observes, and it would be matched against the data in this repository…….As computer scientists, this is a platform database problem, and we do these very, very well, as a general rule. And it befuddles me why medicine hasn’t organized itself around these platform o