HITS

After using its Watson artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform in other sectors, IBM is now bringing Watson ‘s cognitive capabilities to help improve IT service and support functions, the company said April 7.

IBM’s Workplace Support Service with Watson was designed to create a “more intelligent workplace, which will work to anticipate, predict and act to meet current and future tech support requirements,” the company said in its announcement.

The service will “transform how service and support is delivered by integrating IBM’s helpdesk services with analytics and Watson’s cognitive capabilities, learning from user behavior and improving over time,” IBM said, adding the service can support people using “any device, any time and at any location, and will offer faster resolution of IT issues, handling the majority of support tickets when integrated with other helpdesk automation functions.”

The new solution “sets the standard for organizations that are looking to provide consistent” 24-hour IT support to a “geographically dispersed, mobile workforce,” for an increasingly large pool of devices, at a set price point, and will also: “deliver superior personalized experience from non-technical to tech-savvy personnel”; “provide a single-point-of-contact solution” that supports the traditional IT workplace and also complex mobile environments; and “transform the IT user environment into a more intelligent, scalable and security-rich workplace,” IBM said.

Watson understands and learns from just about each interaction and offers new possibilities by applying that learning to “objectively identify the most probable answers or actions to solve user problems,” IBM said.

“Today, governments and enterprises need to provide an effective set of capabilities to their workforce, so that their employees can deliver a superior interaction and experience for their citizens and consumers,” Richard Esposito, general manager of GTS Mobility Services at IBM, said in the news release. He added: “We need a system that can understand and communicate in a natural language conversation, one that solves problems and continues to learn while engaging with employees. Our Workplace Support Services with Watson delivers this value.”

In other Watson news, the company said Sanjay Brahmawar, general manager of IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT), will deliver a keynote session at the 15th annual IBM China Forum April 11. The session will focus on how Watson is helping to transform the manufacturing industry.

Separately, IBM said its scientists were granted a patent on machine learning models to predict therapeutic indications and side effects from various drug information sources. IBM Research implemented a cognitive association engine to “identify significant linkages between predicted therapeutic indications and side effects, and a visual analytics system to support the interactive exploration of these associations,” the company said, noting the approach may help researchers in pharmaceutical companies generate hypotheses for drug discovery.

The patent awarded to the company was for a “method and system for exploring the associations between drug side-effects and therapeutic indications for this invention.”