In 2016, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) launched its new Health Corps program, which is a global pro bono program for tackling health disparities. Over 100 organizations around the world submitted their proposals this year.　The dengue modeling project submitted by the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) was selected as one of the first five IBM grants of pro bono Health Corps services. The program will deploy IBM’s most talented employees around the world to work with Taiwan CDC. While on location, the IBM team will utilize IBM's capabilities in data analytics, cognitive and cloud computing, and Internet of Things to help Taiwan CDC work on the proposed dengue modeling project. Taiwan CDC believes that this collaboration opportunity with IBM can help support decision making of relevant dengue prevention and control policies in Taiwan and set a good example for future industry-government collaboration in terms of disease prevention and control.

IBM Watson Health was launched in 2015 with the aim of using cognitive computing to help healthcare professionals improve healthcare quality and reduce waste. This year, IBM launched its Health Corps program to provide $2.5 million worth of public health-related pro bono consulting. The program sends cross-disciplinary teams of five to six top performing IBM employees -- all of whom spend one month in preparation -- to spend three weeks with civil sector and not-for-profit health organizations worldwide. While on site, the teams draw upon IBM's capabilities in data analytics, cognitive and cloud computing, mobile app development, Internet of Things, weather and health consulting to design strategies that help communities improve a given aspect of public health. The 5 new Health Corps partners for 2016-17 include American Cancer Society (ACS), Duke Health and Duke Center for Community & Population Health Improvement, Gorgas Memorial Institute in Panama, RAD-AID and Taiwan CDC. These selected collaboration projects aim to increase the availability of chemotherapy medicines, better track and control mosquito-borne diseases, foster more informed community health interventions, and increase access to diagnostic radiology in underserved countries.

As dengue control is one of our top priorities, Taiwan CDC has already invested a tremendous amount of resources in dengue prevention and control efforts and establishing our surveillance system. Taiwan CDC is in the process of applying climate-driven statistical models to describe associations between climate and dengue, simulate outbreaks, and predict the effects of projected climate change on dengue fever epidemics, which can help estimate the required dengue management resources. With its expertise in data analytics and population health capabilities, IBM’s support will definitely accelerate our work and improve the prediction accuracy of our dengue modeling, which will serve as future references for identifying regions at risk for more severe dengue patients, examining existing disparities in healthcare provision and access and setting priorities for dengue vaccination. The outcome of this project can also be used to help better track and control dengue fever worldwide and other mosquito-borne diseases such as Zika infection, thus closing the gap in dengue fever detection and improving the response capacity.