IBM, ADA partner to build digital tools to fight diabetes
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and IBM’s Watson Health announced a partnership to develop digital tools for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diabetes.
The collaboration will aim to develop various apps that will help industry research, allow individuals to better manage their disease and provide doctors more tools to diagnose and care for patients.
“Our hope is to impact not just the doctors, the researchers, the patients and caregivers but also the entrepreneurs. The folks who are trying to really be creative with how to engage mobile apps in cognitive to help people living with diabetes,” said Kyu Rhee, chief health officer at IBM Watson Health.
IBM and the ADA initially plan to create a cognitive diabetes databases for both clinicians and researchers. For doctors, it aims to help inform the best treatment path for each patient and identify risk. Researchers could gain unique insights to help highlight hidden patterns or new therapeutic targets. The data will also be open to outside developers to create apps that can help patients directly.
“The ADA is never going to be the next hot apps developer, but we can help the people who are the cool innovative folks,” says Jane Chiang, senior vice president of medical technology at the ADA. “We want to provide quality content to the technology community, so they can use our resources to get the correct information out there.”
To help spur innovation, IBM and the ADA announced a developer challenge for new apps that use Watson’s cognitive computing power and the ADA’s data. They will be accepting submissions later this year.
The announcement was made at the ADA’s 76th Scientific Sessions in New Orleans.
Nicholas joined TriMed in 2016 as the managing editor of the Chicago office. After receiving his master’s from Roosevelt University, he worked in various writing/editing roles for magazines ranging in topic from billiards to metallurgy. Currently on Chicago’s north side, Nicholas keeps busy by running, reading and talking to his two cats.