As the COVID 19 pandemic spreads globally, people are frantically approaching healthcare organisations, governments and other businesses with questions on symptoms, remedies and wellness measures and more. The big spur in demand has put a strain on customer support resources. Healthcare professionals across the globe are working tirelessly on faster diagnosis and rapid response systems. In such situations, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based systems have emerged as a boon for government agencies and healthcare organisations helping the front line workers in assisting them.

To assist the frontline healthcare workers who are involved in sample collection and testing, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, has recently decided to adopt IBM’s Watson virtual agent, Watson Assistant on its portal. Watson Assistant is available on ICMR’s website for the staff and data entry operators from various testing and diagnostic facilities. The AI-enabled system will respond to specific queries, for instance, information on stock transferring or approved list of RT-PCR kits and so on.

According to Balram Bhargava, Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India has been able to manage Covid-19 to a certain extent. That said, It is critical to remain focused on testing, diagnosis and treatment in order to lower the growth curve. “This collaboration with IBM will help automate responses from the field and facilitate access to accurate and updated data on Covid-19 diagnostics and reporting. This will help augment our teams’ response time and allow them to concentrate on priorities like developing and updating, testing and treatment protocols and guidance for Covid-19,” Bhargava states.

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, the process of reporting to various Government agencies and references to the latest guidance, in addition to responding to queries on Covid-19 in general.

What will Watson do?

The Watson virtual agent is AI-enabled and will be able to understand and respond to common queries in English and Hindi, from approved testing facilities for Covid-19 across India. It can work at scale, around the clock in a uniform and timely manner, as per the latest health ministry guidelines, claims the company. Watson Assistant provides responses to common employee questions and can also share relevant resources around the clock, alleviating the burden on internal help and IT desks.

 Queries will be sorted under various categories like governance, logistics, data entry and sharing, staff training & testing. For complex questions, the pre-defined contact information of ICMR is made available. Globally, many governments, including the Polish Ministry of Health, city of Austin etc. use Watson Assistant.

Commenting on the technology Gopalakrishnan S, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India says, “The deployment of IBM’s chatbot AI platform is aimed to help ICMR effectively manage the process of capturing data relating to COVID. It is crucial to enable government bodies such as ICMR to utilise data and capabilities effectively for rapid detection and treatment.”

As the Covid-19 test network expands across the country, the virtual agent is also expected to help in on-boarding new data entry operators and staff of diagnostic centres. Utilising data and capabilities effectively for rapid detection and treatment is crucial to meet the COVID challenge opines Sandip Patel, General Manager, IBM India/South Asia.