Guiding Eyes transfers data to the IBM Cloud to improve the quality of care for blind people.

A person who, for one reason or another, is deprived of the opportunity to see, often trusts his life and health to specially trained guide dogs. The organization Guiding Eyes for the Blind is engaged in breeding and searching for such dogs. In order to find (or grow) an ideal assistant for a specific person, it is necessary to process a considerable amount of structured and unstructured data, related both to dogs and to the people that the organization takes care of. In order to make information processing more efficient, Guiding Eyes for the Blind decided to start working with the IBM Cloud service.

The transition to the “cloud” began two years ago, after it became clear that new servers were needed for storing and processing the organization’s data. Understanding that there was already a lot of information, management decided not to maintain their own DC (data center), but to transfer data to the IBM Cloud. With the help of the IBM service, the company successfully transferred about half a million medical records of people and about 65 thousand records related to dogs. In addition to storing data, IBM Cloud also helps organizations communicate with colleagues within the United States and look for scientific partners to help process all this data.

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The head of the organization says that each animal is evaluated on a wide range of criteria. All actions and behaviors of the dog are entered into the database. Also, this includes the DNA database of dogs, information about the breed, training, etc. There are also unstructured data in the form of scanned questionnaires that are filled in by employees of the organization and host families.

Such data helps to understand which dog is more inclined to learn and is able to help a person.

“Turning to the IBM Cloud, we realized that all this data we’ve accumulated can now be used,” said a spokesperson for Guiding Eyes. He also added that people usually do not think of this organization as a Big Data company. “In fact, Guiding Eyes would not be able to develop without the cooperation with the IBM Cloud in terms of processing and storing all its data. Collecting information about our dogs for many years, we can delve into the recording, having received important clues about the health, behavior, temperament of an animal. All this over time has become too complicated for our equipment. By moving to the IBM Cloud, we simplified the tasks of our IT department and made our data more accessible, ”continues the head of the organization, Thomas Panek.

Thomas Panek also has limited vision, and the golden retriever Gus, whom Panek found through a search in the database of his organization, helps him in life.

Soon, the organization with the help of the IBM Cloud is going to make its databases available to partners of scientists and information security specialists. For example, experts from the University of San Jose will help analyze the genetic information and behavioral data of animals. Scientists can use IBM Bluemix to analyze Guiding Eyes structured and unstructured data.

By May of this year, representatives of Guiding Eyes hope to analyze the huge amounts of data available to the organization to identify patterns in the data and the correlation of various signs, characteristics, characteristics of the nature of both the trainers and the behavioral characteristics of the dogs themselves.

As a result, the organization hopes to improve the efficiency of the dog breeding and training process. It is worth noting that the price of annual training is about $ 50,000, and any improvement in both the characteristics of the breed of dogs and the increase in the effectiveness of the training will help the organization save some serious money. They can be sent to new goals, expansion and development of the organization. Accordingly, the quality of assistance to people in need of guide dogs will also improve.