ARMONK, N.Y., Aug.
25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today named the first
five winners of the company's new IBM Health Corps grants,
providing $2.5 million worth of
public health-related pro bono consulting by some of IBM's most
talented employees around the world over the next six months.
The first projects aim to increase the availability of
chemotherapy medicines in sub Saharan Africa; better track and
control Zika, dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases in
Taiwan and Panama; foster more informed community health
interventions in the Southeast United
States; and increase access to diagnostic radiology in
underserved countries.
Health Corps is IBM's latest example of pro bono consulting and
technology services within the company's portfolio of problem
solving initiatives. The program deploys cross-disciplinary teams
of five to six top performing IBM employees -- all of whom spend
one month in preparation -- to spend three weeks with civil sector
and not-for-profit health organizations worldwide. While on
location, the teams draw upon IBM's capabilities in data analytics,
cognitive and cloud computing, mobile app development, Internet of
Things, weather and health consulting to design strategies that
help communities improve a given aspect of public health. The goal
is to address disparities in healthcare access, improve services
and increase impact.
After reviewing the entries of over 100 applicant organizations,
IBM chose the following projects to support. The first, with the
American Cancer Society, is scheduled to commence in September 2016:
American Cancer Society (ACS) - Currently, very few
cancer patients in sub Saharan Africa receive chemotherapy,
correlating with significantly lower cancer survival rates than in
developed countries. IBM could provide support for the creation
of a chemotherapy-forecasting tool that may allow ACS,
ministries of health in Ethiopia,
Nigeria and Uganda, and other global health partners to
increase the availability and lower the cost of cancer treatments.
Better data and predictive analytics in a chemotherapy forecasting
tool may more precisely anticipate local needs and improve price
negotiations with medicine suppliers.
Duke Health and Duke Center for Community
& Population Health Improvement - Residents in greater
Durham, North Carolina in the U.S.
are committed to improving health for everyone in their community.
IBM will work with Duke Health to establish a framework for an
analytics platform that will help stakeholders from health,
business, public, and other sectors share their health improvement
efforts with each other and measure the impact of their efforts on
community health.
Gorgas Memorial Institute, Panama - Panama has seen recent Zika and Chikungunya
outbreaks, as well as the re-emergence of dengue fever, but lacks a
real-time surveillance system for relaying timely information from
field investigators to researchers, health officials and policy
makers. IBM will design a mobile application to enable public
health field investigators to collect and immediately send
geo-located information on disease outbreaks and mosquito breeding
sites to the Ministry of Health. This will likely facilitate more
rapid and effective decision-making for infectious disease
control.
RAD-AID - According to the World Health
Organization, nearly half the world has little or no radiology
services, contributing to challenges in the diagnosis and treatment
of illnesses such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, and for
prenatal care. IBM Health Corps will work with RAD-AID, a
not-for-profit that provides medical imaging services and support
for developing countries including Laos, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Ghana. IBM will recommend a framework for
increasing digital radiology capacity in RAD-AID's partner
countries, including secure cloud-based storage of radiological
scans. This will enable doctors to compare a patient's medical
images over time, making more accurate and effective tracking and
diagnosing of medical conditions more likely.
Taiwan Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) - Dengue fever outbreaks have
surged in Taiwan in the past two
years and are expected to worsen in the coming years, according to
the Taiwan CDC. IBM Health Corps will apply predictive analytics to
identify regions at greater risk and help the Taiwan CDC to set
priorities for dengue vaccination and mosquito control. IBM's model
may use data from death registries, weather observations, climate
projections, socio-economic studies and health insurance claims.
This approach might also be used to track other mosquito borne
diseases.
IBM had already completed three pilot Health Corps
engagements before today's grants announcement. They provided
proof of concept for the potential effectiveness of such projects.
One of these was with Unity Health Care in Washington, D.C., one of the nation's largest
Federally Qualified Health Centers, which provides healthcare to
more than 100,000 Washington, D.C.
residents in underserved neighborhoods. Unity wanted to integrate
behavioral health into its primary care practices to boost quality
of care, increase provider satisfaction and competence and reduce
long-term costs. After receiving input from IBM Health Corps, Unity
began piloting this integrated model at several of its sites. In
less than one month of beginning the pilots, three behavioral
health consultants have conducted over 100 patient encounters,
offering more efficient access to mental health care on the
same day that primary care is provided.
Additionally, during the Health Corps three-week engagement with
Unity, IBM demonstrated the potential of Internet of Things
technology to more accurately track patient and staff movement in
the clinics, and provide different methods of scheduling patient
appointments. These demonstrations showed how technology can
increase the efficiency and effectiveness of care, while enabling
staff to have even greater focus on patient care.
More information about these IBM Health Corps engagements, as
well as more background about the goals of the program, can be
found at ibmhealthcorps.org. For more information about IBM's
philanthropic efforts, please visit
www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility and www.citizenIBM.com, or
follow @CitizenIBM on Twitter.
Following are statements from IBM and recipients of IBM Health
Corps grants:
"Globally, the public health community is on the brink of
eliminating some of the most pressing health disparities of our
day. We've heard from our partners that access to data, analytics,
and cognitive computing is key to closing the gap. By contributing
our IBM experts and technology to partner with these five visionary
organizations, we believe that together we can transform health in
our communities and across the world."
Jen Crozier
Vice President of Global Citizenship Initiatives
IBM
"Deepening our understanding of health disparities, and the
factors that drive them, is a central objective of the Duke Center
for Community and Population Health Improvement. We are eager to
work with IBM's Health Corps on this project. Mapping current
population health interventions will ultimately allow us to
identify gaps, realize efficiencies and better define measured
steps relevant sectors and stakeholders can take to improve
population health."
Dr. Eugene Washington
Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke
University and President and CEO
Duke University Health
System
"Our partnership with IBM Health Corps will create a powerful
information-sharing pipeline between field investigators and policy
makers to control Zika and other infectious diseases. As new health
threats emerge, we will be ready to act."
Nestor Sosa, MD, FACP
Director General
Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies
"RAD-AID and IBM Health Corps are collaborating to bridge the
digital divide for addressing global health care disparities, in
which radiology and medical imaging represent the leading edge of
international health IT in developing countries, and RAD-AID is
pleased to launch this initiative with IBM for bringing high
technology health solutions to the medically underserved in
low-resource regions via collaborative advancement of international
radiology data architectures, medical image management and
cognitive computing."
Daniel J. Mollura, MD
President and CEO
RAD-AID International
"We are excited about this collaboration opportunity with IBM
Health Corps on this dengue modeling project, which could improve
the capacity across Taiwan,
Southeast Asia and beyond to
tackle the burden of dengue. As dengue control is one of our top
priorities this year, Taiwan CDC has already invested a tremendous
amount of resources in dengue prevention and control, especially
our surveillance system. With its expertise in data analytics and
population health capabilities, IBM's support will definitely
accelerate our work and potentially help close the gap in global
disease detection and in fighting against the threat of emerging
and re-emerging infectious diseases."
Jen-Hsiang Chuang, MD,
PhD
Deputy Director General
Taiwan Centers for Disease Control
Contact(s) information
Angie Hu
IBM Media Relations
914-499-6532
ahu@us.ibm.com
Ari Fishkind
IBM Media Relations
1 (914) 499-6420
fishkind@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM