China's artificial intelligence (AI) company, iCarbonX, has formed an alliance with seven technology companies that specialize in collecting different types of healthcare data that is cheaper and faster than other rivals, Jun Wang, founder of iCarbonX in the Digital Life Summit, announced.

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Goals of Alliance

The seven companies that collaborated with iCarbonX Digital Life Alliances are Somalogic, HealthTell, PatientsLikeMe, AOBiome, Robustnique, and Galt aim to give people a deeper understanding of the medical, behavioral, and environmental factors that can accelerate disease or optimize health.

However, its ultimate goal is to merge comprehensive biological and patient-generated data with AI technology to instantly detect meaningful signals about health, disease, and aging, and deliver a personalized guide for living a healthy life, according to a report by Venture Beat.

The alliance will use algorithms to analyze reams of genomic, physiological, and behavioral data, which will be in an app.

"Digital Me" will be the name of the app, and through this, the consumers will be directly provided with a customized health and medical advices .

Tools Offered by Alliance

Rivals of the alliance such as Google, IBM, and smaller companies like Arivale in Seattle, Washington, are working on a similar technology, but Wang said that iCarbonX alliance will be able to collect data more cheaply and quickly in a report in Nature.

Moreover, the tools offered by iCarbonX alliance are cutting edge and the set-up will allow different types of data to be integrated seamlessly.

Wang noted that China's population is already used to sharing information through WeChat and other social media, and with that, he said that "No one will be able to collect at the same scale that I am doing." Wang is confident that he can get samples and data from one million people in five years, which in turn will lead to a more informed AI.

The firm has now raised more than US$600 million in investment, wherein some $200 million came mostly from Shenzhen-based Tencent, owner of WeChat application, and another $400 million had been invested in the alliance members, but Wang did not name the source.

The success of the venture will depend on its users' readiness to submit data and heed to the advice of the "Digital Me" app.

TagsiCarbonX, Digital Life Alliance, China Alliances, Health Data, Artificial Intelligence, Health App