IBM Ventures Into Wellness Analytics With Delos Partnership

NEW YORK, United States — Multinational tech company IBM is joining forces with wellness real estate firm Delos to develop cloud apps to identify connections between our health and indoor spaces.

In what is set to be a multi-year collaboration, Delos will leverage IBM’s cloud and cognitive applications to draw insights from its current research into how the indoor environment impacts human health.

Through apps, co-developed by IBM, Delos hopes to uncover data to improve the design, construction and management of indoor spaces, as well as identify the potential return on investment that can be achieved by building healthier living and working environments.

“Delos is generating massive amounts of data to measure the impact of the built environment on occupant health. We were looking for a technology partner to deliver a flexible development platform through the cloud, as well as higher value cognitive services that would provide insights we have yet to fully realize to improve indoor environments,” explained Peter Scialla, Chief Operating Officer at Delos.

“IBM’s extensive technology stack and expertise in areas such as Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, and data analytic capabilities, including Watson cognitive computing, made them an ideal cloud partner as all of these areas are critical to the future of Delos,” he added.

Analyzing data accumulated from Delos’ Well Living Lab — a collaboration between Delos and the Mayo Clinic, that simulates a wide variety of real-world indoor environments to enable scientists and researchers to study the many effects of indoor conditions — Delos and IBM will develop a number of new cloud apps. The first experiments, which are already under way, involve simulations in the built environment that affect stress and productivity for office workers.

“As the healthcare community increasingly recognises the many factors that impact health, the Well Living Lab is improving our understanding of how indoor environments impact health and wellness,” said Shawn Murray, Worldwide Director, Bluemix Garage, IBM Cloud.

“By infusing the Lab with advances in cloud innovation, cognitive computing and the Internet of Things, we believe we can help identify insights that deepen and accelerate this important research.”

IBM is currently working with the Well Living Lab to develop an advanced data analytics platform to provide health and wellness insights from the Internet of Things.

Leveraging this power, Well Living Lab researchers and scientists will have fast access to insights that have the potential be used to create spaces that promote improved human performance and wellness.

The market for this kind of data spans a range of industries, Scialla told ZDNet. “If you think about the prospect of rallying the insurance industry to understand how the [indoor] environment affects long-term human health, I’m sure they’re going to be quite interested in what we find,” he said.