Infosys, a global consulting and IT services company, is partnering up with the University in order to develop precision medicine technologies.

Through the partnership, Infosys will provide its expertise in artificial intelligence development, while the University will provide its expertise in computing systems, bioinformatics and genomic applications.

According to the University’s Coordinated Science Laboratory, precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment that takes into account variations in people’s genes, environment and lifestyle.

The University will gain access to all of the AI problems Infosys is trying to solve. In order to implement AI into precision medicine technology, any and all errors must be figured out beforehand. University researchers and students will be taking these problems and implementing them in their research.

In turn, once the problems with the AI are solved, the AI will be used to study large amounts of biological data, which may lead to multiple possibilities in healthcare improvement, including predictions for patients’ diseases and better controlling of prohibitive healthcare costs.

“Not only do we have an opportunity to develop technologies and solutions that can improve and enhance patient care and management,” said Venky Ananth, senior vice president and head of healthcare at Infosys, in a press release. “But we also get a chance to collaborate with some of the finest minds on the new frontiers of healthcare innovation.”

The partnership also serves as a networking opportunity for students, as Infosys will be bringing researchers to visit campus twice a year to help work on the research. Another 120 corporate entities involved in the research will visit as well, providing students with other opportunities to network.

With the partnership, Infosys also becomes an honorary member of the Center for Computational Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine, which is a different collaboration between the University and the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine.

The University and the Mayo Clinic had already been doing research in precision medicine technology, with the Mayo Clinic providing its expertise on genetics, clinical care and individualized medicine.

“Between the three of us, we bring incredible software engineering methods, AI and health and medical data from the Mayo Clinic,” saidRavishankar Iyer, professor in Engineering and director of the CCBGM.

This is not the first time Infosys has been involved with the University. Iyer said Infosys has been funding research at the University for the past 20 years, but this is the first time they are playing a role in contributing to the research.

“The value with partnering with a company like Infosys is because they are major innovators in health,” Iyer said.

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