Dr. Watson gets benched at University of Texas' MD Anderson

MD Anderson changed the software it uses for managing electronic medical records, switching to a system made by Epic Systems of Madison, Wis. It has blamed this new system for a $405 million drop in its net income. According to the audit report, the Watson product doesn’t work with the new Epic System, and must be revamped in order to be re-tested. The information in the MD-Anderson/Watson product is also now out of date.

In September, IBM stopped supporting the product, according the audit, which was produced last November. The Cancer Letter and The Houston Chronicle reported on the audit last week. Forbes obtained a copy of a request-for-proposals confirming that MD Anderson is actively looking for a company to take on IBM’s role. In a statement, MD Anderson said that it was not excluding companies that had previously worked with it from job, implying that it might choose to go with IBM to reboot the project.