With healthcare's increased amount of data and lack of data scientists, IBM Watson has a plan to empower "citizen data scientists" to close the gap. IBM believes that it can offer a solution to the skills shortage by cutting out the data scientists and replacing or supplementing them with its Watson natural language analytics platform.
With data analysis such a crucial part of almost every job in the 21st century, democratizing data analysis may be the answer. Dr. Bob Hoyt, director of health informatics at the University of West Florida, who has been working with Watson for some time, says
“In my classes I have doctors, nurses, pharmacists, healthcare administrators – who mainly don’t have a background in statistics or computer science, so when it comes to analytics – either statistical or data mining – they have to turn to other people.“What appeals to me is that I don’t have to spend two hours explaining a statistical test and have everybody fall asleep, then run the data – I can literally run it, get the results, click a hyperlink to explore the statistical details, and discuss them.”Dr Hoyt introduces students to working with Watson Analytics on his graduate and undergraduate Current Topics in Healthcare course, and began by asking them to experiment with and query anonymized data on asthma.
For more information on how IBM is empowering the citizen data scientist:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/02/29/how-ibm-is-hoping-to-close-the-massive-big-data-and-analytics-skills-gap/#7ba8bd4210f6
