[THE INVESTOR] Korea University Medical Center said on May 26 that it will work with SK C&C to develop an intelligence artificial system that diagnoses antibiotics for patients at hospitals by next year.

The diagnosis and treatment decision support system called Aibril Antibiotics Advisor will be based on IBM Watson, an artificial intelligence system that uses machine learning and can process natural languages.

The advisor will provide physicians with the types of antibiotics, prescribing methods, cycles, and recommendations based on the patient’s symptoms and test results. It provides various information such as adverse effects and antibiotics prescription, along with insurance coverage.

The partnership between the two comes as Korea University Medical Center realized the necessity of specialized antibiotics management and proposed the project to SK C & C.

Sohn Jang-wook, director of the department of Infectious diseases at the hospital, said it will develop the program based on World Health Organization benchmarks, “by focusing on inhibiting the development of antibiotic resistance.”

Antimicrobial stewardship is a coordinated program that promotes the appropriate use of antimicrobials, including antibiotics, improves patient outcomes, reduces microbial resistance, and decreases the spread of infections caused by multidrug-resistant organisms.

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)