Will the future of knowledge work automation transform personalized medicine?

• Automation of ‘routine cognitive processes’ is the need of the hour.
• Expanding biomedical literature, clinical, and research data poses significant problem.
• Knowledge work automation will be beneficial for translating data into information.
• Automated data mining, linking, and annotation will accelerate translational research.
• Artificial intelligence and semantics can automate data intensive tasks in genomics.

Today, we live in a world of ‘information overload’ which demands high level of knowledge-based work. However, advances in computer hardware and software have opened possibilities to automate ‘routine cognitive tasks’ for knowledge processing. Engineering intelligent software systems that can process large data sets using unstructured commands and subtle judgments and have the ability to learn ‘on the fly’ are a significant step towards automation of knowledge work. The applications of this technology for high throughput genomic analysis, database updating, reporting clinically significant variants, and diagnostic imaging purposes are explored using case studies.