IBM’s 5 in 5: Life-Changing Advances in Education, Health Care

by Darryl K. Taft The IBM 5 in 5 is based on market and societal trends as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s Research labs around the world that can make these transformations possible.

In five years, the classroom of the future will learn about each student over the course of their education, helping students master the skills critical to meeting their goals.

A system fueled by sophisticated analytics over the cloud will help teachers predict students who are most at risk and their roadblocks, and then suggest measures to help students overcome their challenges.

In five years, the classroom of the future will learn about each student, helping them master the skills critical to meeting their goals using personalized curriculum. This innovation is part of IBM’s 5 in 5. Here, IBM Director of Education Transformation Chalapathy Neti points to an assessment of a student’s math performance at IBM Research headquarters.

In five years, buying local will become du jour once again. Savvy retailers will use the immediacy of the physical store and proximity to customers to create experiences that cannot be replicated by online-only retail.

Local retailers will magnify the digital experience by bringing the Web right to where the shopper can physically touch it or with the instant gratification of same-day delivery.

In five years, computers will help doctors understand how a tumor affects a patient down to their DNA and present a collective set of medications shown to best attack the cancer, while reducing the time it takes to find the right treatment for a patient from weeks and months to days and minutes.

Cloud-based cognitive systems will make personalized medicine a reality.

Here, Director of Computational Biology Ajay Royyuru points to a drawing of the chemical formula for DNA at IBM Research headquarters in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. In five years, cloud-based cognitive computers will routinely help doctors use DNA data to provide effective, tailored oncology treatments. The advanced systems will cull through medical literature, clinical records and genomic information to present a set of medications shown to best attack an individual patient’s cancer cells, making personalized medicine available at a scale and speed never before possible.

In five years, security is going to become more agile and contextual based on a 360 degree of an individual’s data, devices and applications. A digital guardian will have your back, trained to focus on the people and items it is entrusted with, so it can make inferences about what’s normal or reasonable activity and what’s not, ready to spot deviations that could be precursors to an attack and a stolen identity.

With time, security will become less dependent on rules, like passwords, and become more agile and based on who we are and what we care about.

In five years, smarter cities will understand in real time how billions of events occur as computers learn to understand what people need, what they like, what they do and how they move from place to place.

Mobile devices and social engagement will enable citizens to strike up a relationship with their city leaders so their voices will be heard not only on election day, but every day.