Ministry project to collect diabetics' data for development of AI tools that help manage condition

The industry ministry has begun a project to support the development of artificial intelligence tools that help diabetics improve their diet and daily habits, to prevent their condition from worsening, sources have said. The ministry hopes to collect data from some 2,000 diabetics whose condition is very bad by year-end through a clinical trial in cooperation with the Japan Diabetes Society. The data, which will include weight and the numbers of steps taken, will serve as high-quality training data for AI development. Training data is the initial set of information used by AI computer systems to learn how to draw accurate conclusions on a topic. A project linking clinical research with data collected from so many diabetics is unprecedented anywhere in the world, according to sources, which include a ministry executive.