IBM Watson Assistant to Handle Coronavirus Questions
Watson Assistant for Citizens automates responses to frequently asked questions about COVID-19 on topics such as symptoms, testing, and protective measures. Photo: IBM
With coronavirus (COVID-19) affecting 206 countries, areas and territories, IBM is helping government agencies, healthcare organizations, and academic institutions throughout the world use AI to put critical data and information into the hands of their citizens.
With a flood of information requests from citizens, wait times in many areas to receive answers can exceed two hours. Available for no charge for at least 90 days and available to citizens online or by phone, IBM offers Watson Assistant for Citizens on the IBM public cloud.
It brings together Watson Assistant, Natural Language Processing capabilities from IBM Research, and enterprise AI search capabilities with Watson Discovery, to understand and respond to common questions about COVID-19.
Watson Assistant for Citizens leverages currently available data from external sources, including guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and local sources such as links to school closings, news and documents on a state website.
IBM says it is already delivering this service across the United States, as well as engaging with organizations globally in Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, UK, and more.
Using information provided by clients, Watson Assistant for Citizens automates responses to frequently asked questions about COVID-19 that come in via phone call or text, such as “What are symptoms?”, “How do I clean my home properly?” and “How do I protect myself?”
IBM is also working with global businesses in other industries to apply AI to help them respond to COVID-19 and reimagine the way work will get done in this new operating environment.
