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IBM offers free tools to track the spread of COVID-19 on your phone

Hyperlocal Data, News and Information from The Weather Channel App Now Available at Your Fingertips to Help Keep You Informed About the Coronavirus

Sheri Bachstein

Global Head of Consumer Business, The Weather Company

As COVID-19 continues to spread across the country, IBM is offering free tools to help consumers track the reported cases of coronavirus in their local communities.

Available on weather.com/coronavirus and The Weather Channel app for iOS and Android, The Weather Company, an IBM business, recently launched a new, interactive “Incidents Map” to offer up-to-date information about the spread of COVID-19 by U.S. state and county — which is more localized than many other resources. 

Easily accessible – for free – on a smartphone or web browser, the solution provides the latest information with AI-enhanced data visualization, including interactive mapping and a trend graphs that shows recent statistics, confirmed cases and data trends over time. The new feature will also include the latest news and video from The Weather Channel editorial team, along with public health information, including patient education materials, locations of key healthcare clinics and testing centers and more. 

In addition, IBM is making an interactive dashboard available to help users such as data scientists, researchers, media organizations and more conduct a deeper analysis and filtering of regional data. Available data include confirmed cases, recoveries where available and more, as well as additional data local authorities have available related to demographic impacts, graphs and visualizations. This data could potentially help others collect insights and show how it is trending over time.

The tools, which run on the IBM public cloud, use IBM Watson to access and analyze data from the World Health Organization and multiple national, state and local governments. This data will be more localized than some other resources currently available – drilling down to the county level in the United States, where available.   

The Weather Channel’s Sheri Bachstein is available for interviews to break down the Incidents Map on weather.com and The Weather Channel app, explain where the data comes from and discuss how consumers and government officials can benefit from this new information.

For more information please visit: weather.com/coronavirus

More About Sheri Bachstein:

Sheri Bachstein leads the consumer division for The Weather Company, an IBM Business (Weather). This includes overseeing all aspects of The Weather Channel and Weather Underground consumer properties, including product management and design, content development and global expansion across the organization on Weather’s owned and operated properties.  

Sheri has played a role on many different aspects of The Weather Channel digital properties since joining in 2007. Previously she was head of global audience growth and has also led international consumer product for weather.com and The Weather Channel apps. While leading web efforts, she moved weather.com to a fully responsive site, improved SEO efforts, optimized referral traffic, and oversaw engagement and lifestyle sponsorship efforts. As vice president of product operations, Sheri’s overseen monetization, operations and the agile team. She’s also worked as a leader for audience products, as well as in product management for weather.com and global products. 

But this isn’t her first stint at The Weather Channel. She worked previously for the television network as a producer and as part of the “storm tracking” team that went into the field to cover storms (1997-2000). Before returning to Weather, Sheri served as vice president of product and content at RMS Networks in Fort Lauderdale, FL. In her career she has also worked as a producer for WGNX-TV, Atlanta’s CBS affiliate.  

Sheri has won multiple media awards, including an Emmy Award for breaking news coverage of the Atlanta Centennial Park bombing and an Associated Press Award for sports reporting.

An Atlanta native, Sheri received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Georgia State University. She enjoys playing golf, traveling and cooking.