Happy [Valentine's Day] everyone! Love is in the air! There was plenty of evidence of this everywhere I looked:

• I professed my love for Mo -- we just celebrated our four-year anniversary!
• My fellow Tucsonans [professed their love for beautiful weather with clear sunny skies].
• Server admins [professed their love for their favorite distro of the Linux operating system].
• Storage admins professed their love for IBM System Storage products on IBM's [Reviews and Ratings] portal.
• Physicians around the world professed their love for [electronic medical records and digitized medical imaging].

Sadly, only 70 percent of doctors in the United States use Electronic Medical Record [EMR] systems. My own Primary Care Physician has made the switch, and told me he how much he loves having ready access to the information he needs. EMR systems reduce costs, help manage risk, and improve healthcare outcomes. It is no surprise that the U.S. government has taken a [stick-and-carrot approach] to encourage doctors to use them.

Two years ago this week, [IBM Watson won the Grand Challenge] on the popular Jeopardy! game show. I wrote [a series of blog posts on IBM Watson]. To-date, there have been over 90,000 downloads for my now infamous step-by-step instructions on [How to build your own "Watson Jr." in your basement]!

A frequent topic at the Tucson Executive Briefing Center where I work is how to make the most use of IT for healthcare and life sciences. For much of 2011 and 2012, I was also one of the technical advocates assigned to Wellpoint Insurance, in support of their adoption of IBM Watson technology for healthcare.

Consider [Oncology], the branch of medicine focused on cancer. IBM has just released a new 8-minute YouTube video [IBM Watson Demo: Oncology Diagnosis and Treatment] that shows how IBM Watson is being put to use at [Memorial Sloan-Kettering], a world-class cancer treatment facility.

This is just one of the many [IBM Smarter Healthcare solutions] that is helping to build a smarter planet!

technorati tags: IBM, Watson, Wellpoint Insurance, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, EMR, Oncology, Reviews and Ratings, Valentine's Day