CC image courtesy of Patrick H~ on Flickr
IBM is partnering with the University of Ibadan to deploy Watson, IBM’s cognitive computing research computer, to collect encyclopaedic knowledge of diseases in Nigeria.
This was announced by Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s communication technology minister, in Ibadan while speaking on the role of information and communication technologies in healthcare delivery at the 12th Archives of Ibadan Medicine Inc Public Honours Lecture.
“IBM would deploy their cognitive computing research computer, named “Watson” after IBM’s founder, to collect encyclopaedic knowledge about traditional and non-traditional diseases in Nigeria to help bridge our well-documented health services gap,” Johnson said.
According to her, Watson provides access to cognitive technology that processes information more like a human than a computer by understanding natural language, generating hypotheses based on evidence and learning as it goes. This project, which would be the first of its kind in Africa, is at the initiation phase and is currently undergoing finetuning its scope with the Ministry of Health.
“I have proposed that the University of Ibadan College of Medicine be selected as the project research partner and this has been accepted both by IBM and the University – through Professor Olaopa – and we are very hopeful that we can make this project a reality and help bring cutting edge research capabilities and inferences to the Nigerian Health care system, “she said.
