IBM's Jeopardy-winning supercomputer headed to hospitals. Dr. Watson, we presume?

We always knew that Watson's powers extended well beyond the realm of TV trivia, and now IBM has provided a little more insight into how its supercomputer could help doctors treat and diagnose their patients. Over the past few months, researchers have been stockpiling Watson's database with information from journals and encyclopedias, in an attempt to beef up the device's medical acumen. The idea is to eventually sync this database with a hospital's electronic health records, allowing doctors to remotely consult Watson via cloud computing and speech-recognition technology. The system still has its kinks to work out, but during a recent demonstration for the AP, IBM's brainchild accurately diagnosed a fictional patient with Lyme disease using only a list of symptoms. It may be another two years, however, before we see Watson in a white coat, as IBM has yet to set a price for its digitized doc. But if it's as sharp in the lab as it was on TV, we may end up remembering Watson for a lot more than pwning Ken Jennings. Head past the break for a video from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, which, along with Columbia University, has been directly involved in IBM's program.

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AP

X-Prize reveals plans for tricorder competition, suspiciously lacking Nimoy endorsement

We could feed you a line about the final frontier or exploring strange new worlds, but we'll just give it to you straight: the X-Prize Foundation has teamed up with Qualcomm to design the Tricorder X-Prize, a $10 million competition designed to boldly go where no contest has gone before. Sorry, we couldn't help ourselves. The most recent addition to the ambitious X-Prize stable is aimed at producing a mobile medical device, similar to those used on Star Trek, that can "diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians." Said device would allow regular folks to "quickly and effectively assess health conditions, determine if they need professional help," and then decide on a plan of action. The Tricorder X-Prize competition is still in the planning stages and should be ready to launch sometime in 2012. Full PR after the break.

reghardware X-Prize Foundation