Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a non-profit organization, will be making investment in the IBM Cloud for management and access to its canine data.
Guiding Eyes for the Blind, which is dedicated to the breeding, raising, training and placement of service dogs with people who are blind or visually impaired, has graduated more than 7,300 guide dogs since its founding in 1954.
Canine Development Center (CDC) of the non-profit organization, has captured structured information such as medical records and complex genetic mapping. It has also generated unstructured data from scanned hard-copy questionnaires that trainers and host families complete about their experiences with the dogs.
As per the Cloud deal with IBM, the organization is migrating more than half a million health records and more than 65,000 temperament records on dogs to the IBM Cloud. Guiding Eyes aims to provide access to colleagues across the U.S., as well as partners and scientists.
Thomas Panek, president and CEO of Guiding Eyes, said: “By putting our data on the IBM Cloud, we will simplify our IT and make our data more accessible for more analysis.”
Guiding Eyes aims to improve its screening and breeding processes and improve the graduation rate of its guide dogs from 36 percent annually. Guiding Eyes spends approximately $50,000 to train a guide dog. Any improvements to the graduation rate will improve financial efficiencies and make more guide dogs available.
IBM Cloud will also enable Guiding Eyes to open up its data to external partners for the first time for additional research support.
“Guiding Eyes is a great example of how IBM Cloud can help organizations innovate new business models and processes that were heretofore unthinkable,” said William Karpovich, general manager, IBM Cloud Platform.
