IBM Watson Health (2011-2021)
IBM pitched Watson as a medical decision-maker after its Jeopardy! win, launching Watson Health and Watson for Oncology. Hospitals and cancer centers reported recommendations that were sometimes unsafe, and IBM sold the unit in 2021 for parts, reportedly at a loss.
Watson for Oncology lost hospital partners and was discontinued.
The failure became a cautionary tale for AI in medicine: brand confidence and compute scale do not guarantee clinical utility.
It is the counterweight to Enchant's promises. Validation must come from real trial data, which none of Enchant's partner programs have produced yet.
