Metropolitan Health, the largest medical schemes administrator in South Africa, has announced the first commercial application in Africa of IBM's Watson, the computing platform made famous by competing and winning against human contestants on the game show Jeopardy. 

Metropolitan Health aims to transform health advisory services to its customers using IBM Watson’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language. 

The company provides administration, managed care and wellness services to more than 20 medical schemes or funds, covering millions lives across South Africa.  

Dylan Garnett, CEO of Metropolitan Health, says that health technology plays a critical role in connecting the access-affordability-outcomes priorities for better health services.  

"IBM Watson and cognitive computing are helping us do more than simply fix basic breakdowns in treatment paths; we're "leapfrogging" to deliver a market leading health outcome to the public. We intend to transform every customer interaction with insightful data and deliver the best personalised services and care available"

IBM Watson Engagement Advisor is being configured, trained and introduced into the Metropolitan Health customer services environment where more than 12 million client interactions are handled each year. 

IBM Watson will work as a “virtual coach” assisting Customer Service Agents with enquiries. Watson can sift through the equivalent of about one million books - or roughly 200 million pages of data -  and analyse this information to  provide precise responses in less than three seconds. Customer Services Agents will now be able to use Watson’s ability to rapidly sift through enormous amounts of information, analyse it, and supply evidence-based responses to questions, providing more precise and comprehensive information to customers. This will significantly enhance the consistency of responses, as well as reduce the response time.

“We believe Watson will enable our Customer Service Agents to make better decisions, ultimately driving better health outcomes for the public" says Garnett.

As Watson learns, it will be able to anticipate the “questions behind the questions”, and prompt agents to proactively share information. This allows for all relevant information to be provided in one call, which would normally require two or three follow up calls.  This saves time for both customers and Agents. Over time, Watson will be taught to respond where possible, directly to customer enquiries, and the convenience of having access to health and wellness information 24/7 will be made possible.