不久前，多家頂尖科技公司商定按統一標準打造醫療保健產品，方便醫院更共享醫療數據。開放式標準和規格的另一目標是鼓勵“無障礙數據交換”。

對醫療專業人員和患者來說，亞馬遜、谷歌、IBM、微軟、甲骨文和Salesforce達成的這項協議是個好消息，因為掌握更多信息可能有助于迅速實施診治。如果設想中的高效率成為現實，或許還能節省不少成本。

就醫療保健IT市場今后的競爭力而言，這些標準的開放性也是非常好的消息，因為對規模不如當前這些企業的公司來說，市場準入門檻會降低。

另外，這項協議顯然有利于簽約各方，不僅因為此舉將擴大潛在市場，而且有助于實現人工智能方面的遠大目標。如果處理得當，更多數據就能讓人工智能更聰明。

各家公司確實都需要更聰明的人工智能。想想IBM和沃森大系統，沃森最近還成了《華爾街日報》的抨擊對象，主要內容是十幾名客戶以及合作伙伴已縮小合作規模，或終止用沃森治療癌癥的試驗。

《華爾街日報》的報道稱：“在許多情況下，人工智能工具并未創造出多大的價值。處理某些病歷時沃森不夠準確，會因為罕見或癌癥復發缺乏數據而出錯，治療情況變化的速度明顯超過人類培訓師更新沃森系統的速度。”

這里的教訓告訴我們要實際地看待AI目前的發展水平。但也可以做出另一種解讀，也許對一家公司來說醫療保健領域過于復雜，無論多么令人尊敬，也不管資源多豐富，企業很難單打獨斗提供所有價值。如果情況確實如此，就很有必要制定協議破除條塊分割開放市場，而且很有希望挽救更多生命。（財富中文網）

Some of the biggest tech giants yesterday agreed to build health care products that use a common set of standards in order to make it easier to share medical data across hospitals. What’s more, these are open standards and specifications aimed at encouraging “frictionless data exchange.”

The agreement between Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce is good news for medical professionals and their patients, because having more information at hand potentially aids speedy diagnosis and treatment. If the promised efficiencies materialize, there may even be savings on the horizon.

The openness of the standards is also very good news for the future competitiveness of the health care IT market, because it should lower the barriers to entry for companies that aren’t at the scale that these giants currently enjoy.

But the deal is also clearly good for its signatories, not only because it expands their potential markets, but because it will help feed their artificial intelligence ambitions. More data, if properly wrangled, translates to smarter AI.

And the companies need smarter AI. Consider the case of IBM and its marquee Watson system, which was recently the subject of quite the takedown by the Wall Street Journal. It turns out that more than a dozen clients and partners have scaled down or ended their experiments with using Watson in cancer treatment.

Here’s the relevant bit from that piece: “In many cases, the tools didn’t add much value. In some cases, Watson wasn’t accurate. Watson can be tripped up by a lack of data in rare or recurring cancers, and treatments are evolving faster than Watson’s human trainers can update the system.”

There’s a lesson in here about taking a realistic view of where AI’s development stands today. But there’s another takeaway too: perhaps health care is too sprawling an environment for one company, no matter how venerable and well-resourced, to provide all the value that’s needed on its own. If that’s the case, then there’s much cause to celebrate an agreement that breaks down silos, opens up markets, and hopefully saves lives.