Medtronic, IBM Watson partner on new smartphone app
Earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Medtronic and IBM gave the world a sneak peek at their new collaboration: a smartphone application with the ability to predict low blood sugar in diabetics.
Matthew Herper, a science and medicine writer for Forbes, spoke with representatives from both Medtronic and IBM before their presentation.
Herper wrote about what he learned, saying the app, when combined with a Medtronic insulin pump, will be able to use IBM’s Watson Health cognitive technology and predict low blood sugar up to three hours ahead of time.
“Medtronic already sells a device that sends blood sugar data to a smartphone,” Herper wrote. “The question is, what can a patient do with that data? The Watson software is an app that, in theory, could make that stream of data useful.”
Herper also said the app could be available as early as this summer, and that it may be limited at first.
On Medtronic’s website, the Dublin-based medical technology company goes into more detail about its collaboration with IBM.
Hooman Hakami, executive vice president and president of Medtronic Diabetes, explains that the number-crunching abilities of Watson Health help Medtronic greatly improve its blood sugar-tracking capabilities.
“We believe that we can play a leadership role, but we can’t do it alone, and that’s where partnerships like the one we have with IBM come in,” Hakami said in the article. “So we can take their capability, apply it to the knowledge and the products and the capability that we have to try to do something truly transformational.”
Michael has more than 18 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.