What Specific Role Will Apple Play In IBM's Watson Health Cloud Alliance?

Loading...
Loading...

International Business Machines Corp. IBM recently announced that it is forming an alliance with Apple Inc. AAPL, Medtronic PLC MDT and Johnson & Johnson JNJ to create Watson Health Cloud, which will collected and analyze data from various apps and fitness trackers.

Dan Costa, Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine, was on CNBC recently to explain more about this alliance and what would be the specific role of Apple in it.

The Details

"It's really fascinating," Costa said. "[There] are really three levels to this. On the consumer level you have got the Apple Healthkit which is sort of the frontlines, collecting the data about users. We are all used to seeing our activity tracking on applications, but it could be much more than that. It could be diet, it could be weight. So, that's how the data is being collected."

He continued, "You go one level up and you see Apple's research kit, which allows researchers to conduct experiments to create apps to collect even more research, collect small experiments. IBM Watson is going to be doing sort of even higher level of cloud based analysis, where you take all of this data and then you mine it for insights and it's really pretty exciting."

Apple’s At The Frontline

Costa was asked what specific role will Apple play in this alliance. He replied, "They are really at the frontlines. If you look at the phone as a collection of sensors and data collection tools which is really what it is, we have never had a population that's been as wired and connected as it is right now. There's all sorts of feedback that could be connected."

"Everything from like I said the activity tracking is where it is now, but when you look down the line you say okay what else could you do with this technology. They have got a research project now that's tracking asthma rates with local air quality and looking for the matches and seeing if there are correlations. That's something that has never really been able to be done before in real time and at scale," Costa concluded.

Loading...
Loading...
Posted In: CNBCTechMediaDan CostaPC MagazineWatsonWatson Health Cloud
Benzinga simplifies the market for smarter investing

Trade confidently with insights and alerts from analyst ratings, free reports and breaking news that affects the stocks you care about.

Join Now: Free!

Loading...