It’s not every day that a celebrity makes house calls. But IBM is making its famous Watson supercomputer available to software developers as a cloud-based platform. Since the Jeopardy! champ ¿rst made headlines for beating Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in 2011, Watson has tried its hand at health care and worked as a smartphone-sized virtual assistant.
Now it is giving back to the community. “By sharing IBM Watson’s cognitive abilities with the world, we aim to fuel a new ecosystem that accelerates innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit,” Michael Rhodin, senior vice president of the IBM Software Solutions Group, said in a statement. “With this move, IBM is taking a bold step to advance the new era of cognitive computing.”
The launch of the IBM Watson Developers Cloud marketplace opens the doors to developers of all sizes and industries to tap into the supercomputer’s technological resources, including a developer toolkit, educational materials, and access to Watson’s API. Initially, IBM has partnered with three businesses to develop early versions of Watson-powered apps, expected to enter the market in 2014. Consumers who use the Fluid Expert Personal Shopper app will interact in a dialogue with Watson—your new “cognitive, expert personal shopper,” according to Fluid. The application incorporates user data and questions to help people make smart purchases “by putting a knowledgeable sales associate in the hands of consumers, on demand.”
Meanwhile, health care solution provider MD Buyline is developing an app to allow clinical and ¿nancial users to make real-time decisions about medical device purchases. Dubbed “Hippocrates powered by IBM Watson,” the service provides users with access to a research assistant that provides fast, evidencebased recommendations. A second health-and-wellness service is under development by Welltok, which aims to harness Watson’s ability to learn from interactions to create personalized health itineraries for customers. “CafeWell Concierge” will provide tailored activities and management programs, and reward users for engaging in healthy behaviors.
“The signi¿cance here is that IBM will enable other companies, large and small, to embed access to Watson into their products and services, or better yet, to build applications on top of it,” Welltok board member Mohamad Makhzoumi said in a statement. “This could bring about a paradigm shift not only in how people interact with computers, but in how we live our lives.” Powered by Big Data, IBM will give app developers the option to use their own data, or access the IBM Watson Content Store. “Together with our partners we’ll spark a new class of applications that will learn from experience, improve with each interaction and outcome, and assist in solving the most complex questions facing the industry and society,” Rhodin said.
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