A joint venture between UAE’s sovereign wealth fund (SWF) Mubadala and the US’ IBM Watson has been formed to co-develop and market advanced information and communications technology (ICT) applications, which come under a newly coined term: cognitive computing.

Unlike its “programmable” predecessor - the prevalent platform used in today’s enterprise and consumer ICT applications - cognitive computing utilises a combination of applications such as data mining, pattern recognition and natural language recognition to simulate the activities of the human brain.

As a result, cognitive solutions can be trained to extract context and intent from unstructured data such as images to create a synthesised output, or  knowledge, as its proponents prefer to call it.

The main argument supporting cognitive systems, points out Brian Mulada of IBM Watson Group, is the speed at which data is being created today. ”Data is created faster than we can use them,” the executive told a forum held at the New York University in Abu Dhabi, referring to the unprecedented volume of unstructured data such as music, photographs and video created through social media applications, among others.

This apparently highlights the need for ICT systems that can read and infer context, intent and draw conclusions from a given set of data, an absent feature in many of today’s existing ICT solutions.

The health care sector is being considered a potential early adopter of cognitive systems due to the benefits that can be had through remote medical diagnostics, accurate prescription, and other related services. IBM Watson’s oncology application, for instance, allows cancer patients and their doctors to access a wealth of medical journals, treatment procedures, and cases that could help generate what IBM Watson calls a patient-centred care.

The joint venture company, Cognit, is tasked with building an ecosystem comprising entrepreneurs, developers, systems integrators, start-ups and incubators to drive the development and adoption of such systems in the Middle East region. Besides the health care sector, Cognit says it plans to engage all sectors ranging from aviation and oil and gas to education and government services.

Key challenges, however, exist to slow the adoption of these new technologies, which are still in their very nascent stages. They range from the lack of adequate ICT professionals such as data scientists to the slow adoption of internet-of-things (IoT), or the concept where nearly every device, from television units to water meters, is equipped with sensors that can receive and transmit data through the internet.

Neither Mubadala nor IBM was willing to disclose the value of investments made on Cognit.

The unveling of the JV coincides with the UAE’s innovation week and the announcement of an $82bn investment programme meant to stimulate the country’s science, technology and innovation sector.