Partnership aimed at boosting economy, improving health care
The supercomputer that conquered all challengers at “Jeopardy” is now looking to new challenges in the Middle East and North Africa. IBM is teaming with Abu Dhabi-based investment and development company Mubadala to bring IBM Watson to the region.
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — On July 14, 2015 (Photo courtesy of Mubadala)
The venture is designed to create an ecosystem of partners aimed at promoting the cloud-based cognitive supercomputer in areas such as health care, retail, education, banking and financial organizations. It is said to bring together entrepreneurs, startups and app developers throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The partners said the system will be capable of interacting in natural language, analyzing large amounts of unstructured data, responding to complex questions with evidence-based answers, and discovering new actionable patterns and insights.
“This collaboration is another important demonstration of IBM’s commitment to bringing Watson to all corners of the world and accelerating adoption of cognitive computing as the new technology standard for innovation,” Mike Rhodin, SVP of IBM Watson said. “Mubadala’s strong relationships throughout the MENA region will enable local organizations and entrepreneurs access to Watson to transform their work.”
The partnership is aimed at diversifying Abu Dhabi’s economy through new ventures in ICT and strengthening its competitiveness in fast-growing sectors both locally and internationally. IBM said it will draw on Mubadala’s knowledge of the region to push the adoption of cognitive computing technology.
The two companies believe the project could have a profound impact on the health care industry in the region, and plan to use the technology to help patients and doctors make personalized health decisions using vast amounts of collected data.
“Our collaborations with IBM to apply Watson in health care are helping Cleveland Clinic deliver on our mission of providing state-of-the-art education to our medical students,” Dr. Delos Cosgrove, CEO and president of the clinic said. “As a partner to both IBM and Mubadala, I am pleased to see these two market leaders join together in this important region and believe that their work together will help make it possible for a broader group of medical professionals to unearth the information they need to provide patient-centered care.”
International Data Corporation projects that ICT spending in the MENA region will exceed $270 billion in 2015, making it the second-fastest-growing IT market in the world.
This is not IBM’s first foray into the MENA region. It has had a presence for more than 60 years and made significant investments in areas such as cloud computing and nanotechnology.
Last year IBM launched a 10-year, $100 million research initiative called “Project Lucy” that uses Watson to develop economically viable solutions to take on Africa’s health care, agriculture and education challenges.
IBM is currently working on hundreds of projects to expand Watson’s language-learning capabilities in Arabic, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese.
The terms of the agreement have not been released.
