IBM India Inventors contribute 658 U.S. Patents out of 8,000+ Received in 2016

IBM inventors were awarded patents on innovations that will help advance cognitive healthcare. For example:

• Using images to better gauge heart health: Cardiac disease categorization is challenging due to complexity of the heart. IBM researchers have developed a method for categorizing human heart disease states by using cardiac images to characterize the shape and motion of the heart. This could be used toaid doctors with the diagnosis of heart disease symptoms. (USPatent #9,311,703: Method and system for categorizing heart disease states)

• A personalized hearing aid to meet your specific needs:Finding hearing aid devices personalized to meet the specific needs of individual users continues to be a challenge. IBM inventors developed a hearing aid device that can distinguish and filter voices and sounds. The device couldbe trained to distinguish sounds such as a smoke alarm and to listen intelligently to one’s environment while filtering some sounds and amplifying others to improve the user’s experience with the device. (US Patent #9,374,649: Smart hearing aid)

• Using drones to clean microbes in hospitals and agricultural fields: In this patent, surveying, testing and measuring contamination is controlled by a cognitive facility that manages drones. The drones could enter a contaminated area, collect specimens then confirm and map and sterilize contamination. This process is triggered by specific risks or performed on an ongoing basis. By collecting and sterilizing microbe samples through a drone, or fleet of drones, new insights into bacterial infections in the hospital, or farmland become possible. (US Patent #9,447,448: Drone-based microbial analysis system)

IBM inventorsalso patented more than 1,600 inventions that can help advance the field of cloud computing. For example:

• Cognitive Cloud for your applications: Cloud Computing enables resiliency and availability of resources for applications. This patent pro-actively identifies hotspots in a cloud computing environment, including the server, storage and network where a resource constraint is likely to occur causing performance problems. The cloud learns parameters associated with a workload and provides an autonomic solution based on cloud resource usage for deployment or migration of applications.Another IBM innovation — identifying a potential problem before it becomes an actual problem — keeping your cloud computing environment running smoothly. (US Patent #9,329,908: Proactive identification of hotspots in a cloud computing environment)

• Measurement and Integrated Reporting of Public Cloud Usage in a Hybrid Cloud Environment: Using a public cloud in a hybrid cloud environment provides both cost advantages as well as the availability of additional resources. The patent teaches an approach for provisioning public cloud resources and actively monitoring how much you are using at each public cloud. Unified usage reports describing the services supplied by multiple public cloud service providers are generated and provide detailed information on which of your users are consuming resources, who is proving those resources, and how much it costs. This innovation enables enterprises to monitor and measure employee and application usage and reduce information technology costs. (US Patent #9,336,061: Integrating metering of service usage for hybrid clouds)