IBM Offers Free Tools to Track COVID-19 Cases

IBM Offers Free Tools to Track COVID-19 Cases
IBM

In this challenging time, IBM is offering free tools to track reported COVID-19 cases near you and help you stay informed. Offered through The Weather Channel app, weather.com, and an online dashboard, this information is designed to help provide the latest details currently available from various official sources to people and businesses so they can access it easily on their computers or smartphones.

"As the coronavirus causes uncertainty in our daily lives, we are all looking for data to help us make more informed decisions and check on our family and friends in different areas. With that in mind, we feel it's critical to provide the most trusted information currently available to help people stay informed on the reach of COVID-19," said Cameron Clayton, general manager of IBM's The Weather Company. "The Weather Channel is now providing COVID-19 data so you can see why social distancing matters in your community and why it's important to heed instructions from your local, state and national resources.

Citizens, researchers and even government officials can use the data-rich tools to get currently available information from various official sources about the reach of the coronavirus, down to a county level in the United States. The tools, which run on the IBM public cloud, use IBM Watson to access and analyze data from the World Health Organization and multiple national, state and local governments. This data will be more localized than some other resources currently available drilling down to the county level in the United States, where available.

In addition, an interactive dashboard, driven by IBM Watson and built on Cognos Analytics, is designed to help users such as data scientists, researchers, media organizations and more conduct a deeper analysis and filtering of regional data. Available global data includes confirmed cases, recoveries where available and more, and users can drill down to the country, region, state and county level as needed to get further insights. This aggregated data could potentially help others collect insights and show how cases are trending over time.