I am <i>aware of</i> some groups that are (at least planning to) use IBM Watson to analyse the outcomes and impacts of social policy research.<p>As a (made up) example: feeding the AI data-sets of various social investments made (eg: education, mental health, social &amp; medical support) alongside health and societal outcomes (crime, hospital intake, suicides, etc..) then overlaying it on a map and maybe getting Watson to &quot;tell you&quot; which investments had the best impacts.<p>That particular example is actually an amalgam of a number of projects my girlfriend has undertaken recently in her career as a social-policy analyst <i>BUT</i> she is also enrolled in a university Master&#x27;s program next year where one of the possibilities for her placement is to work supporting the Watson team in figuring out how to use Watson to improve lives &amp; outcomes in the real world.<p>I&#x27;ve also <i>heard</i> about using Watson in analyzing health data (detecting cancers based on mass x-ray analysis) - but I don&#x27;t know how much of that is currently working.<p>Hope that helps - I know it&#x27;s all anecdotal from my side and I can&#x27;t link you to anything published on the topic, but you can take the example for what it is worth :)<p>EDIT - I&#x27;ll try and ask her if she got any more information about what she was going to do for Watson.