Industrial Automation Magazine India

ICMR to Leverage IBM Watson Assistant to aid Testing Facilities on COVID-19

Published on : Tuesday 05-05-2020

The virtual agent has been deployed on protected pages of the ICMR website that can be accessed only by authorised personnel.

New Delhi, May 4, 2020: Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, has collaborated with IBM to implement a Watson virtual agent (called Watson Assistant) on its portal to respond to specific queries of front line staff and data entry operators from various testing and diagnostic facilities across the country on COVID-19. The virtual agent has been deployed on protected pages of the ICMR website that can be accessed only by authorised personnel who are involved with sample collection and testing in hospitals and diagnostic labs. The queries could be related to nature and process of data to be captured by test labs, how to record inventory of test kits & reagents, process of reporting to various Government agencies and references to the latest guidance, in addition to responding to queries on COVID-19 in general.

Professor Balram Bhargava, Director General, ICMR said, “While India has been able to manage COVID-19 to a certain extent, the challenge still continues to minimise further. It is critical to remain focused on testing, diagnosis and treatment in order to lower the growth curve. With the number of on-field testing teams expanding across the nation as part of India’s COVID-19 measures, this collaboration with IBM will help automate responses from the field & facilitate access to accurate & updated data on COVID-19 diagnostics & reporting.”