When Edward Watson found a black spot on his left forearm in May 2004, the physician, then 39 years old, realized that it was the return of the melanoma that he had previously been treated for.

FORBES: Targeting Melanoma

Speaking at the 2011 High Performance Computing for Wall Street, Edward Epstein of IBM Research, explained that Watson was designed to work with natural language content and deep analysis drawing on all the available content.

FORBES: Build Your Own Watson with Open Source Software