On Monday, ICMR announced that it would be leveraging IBM’s famous artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Watson, to streamline data entry and organisation processes. As ICMR ramps up testing and adds more facilities, IBM will deploy AI chat for operators to aid them in data entry. Watson will also assist centres in processing, capturing, and reporting of records regarding tests, storage of kits, and reagents. This service will be available across centres in both Hindi and English, and is expected to better the response time and data handling of the agency.
ICMR, at present, is only using Watson for backend reporting, but it also needs to deploy it for data analysis and forecasting trends. Watson can, for instance, take states’ data and point to anomalies in reporting. It can also highlight which clusters may be turning into red zones and aid the government in conducting better contact tracing. For instance, in the early days, data highlighted anomalies in Gujarat’s death rates, which ultimately led to wider testing and detection of more cases. IBM can do well to highlight such trends and more. It can also aid in the development of dashboards which allow for real-time updates on the availability of beds, PPEs and ventilators in hospitals. Not only will this improve the management of these resources, but it will also help the government revamp its supply chains.
