It's very common for healthcare consumers to query Google about the diagnosis and management of health problems. Almost 11 years ago, I blogged about the then increasingly familiar strategy of "paging Dr. Google" for advice (see: Paging Dr. Google! We Are Waiting for a Second Opinion.) We have now evolved to the reality of asking Dr. Alexa, in concert with Dr. Google, to help us solve even more of our medical problems (see: Doctor Alexa will see you now: Is Amazon primed to come to your rescue?). Below is an excerpt from an article on this topic, It's long and informative so link to it if the topic interests you:
[Amazon] thinks Alexa, the virtual assistant inside them, could help doctors diagnose mental illness, autism, concussions and Parkinson’s disease. It even hopes Alexa will detect when you’re having a heart attack. At present, Alexa can perform a handful of healthcare-related tasks: “She” can track blood glucose levels, describe symptoms, access post-surgical care instructions, monitor home prescription deliveries and make same-day appointments at the nearest urgent care center....Amazon has [also] partnered with numerous healthcare companies...to let consumers and employees use Alexa for healthcare purposes. Workers at Cigna can manage their health improvement goals and earn wellness incentives with Alexa. And Alexa helps people who use Omron Healthcare’s blood pressure monitor, HeartGuide, track their readings.
But a flood of new opportunities are emerging since Alexa won permission to use protected patient health records ....Before, Alexa had been limited to providing generic responses about medical conditions.....Amazon has extended its Alexa Skills Kit, the software development tools used to add functions. Soon, the virtual assistant will be able to send and receive individualized patient records, allowing healthcare companies to create services for consumers to use at home. Amazon’s efforts in this domain are important because, with its 100 million smart devices in use worldwide, it could radically change the way consumers get health information and even treatment.
For me, one of the most intriguing aspect of this story is the discussion of the Alexa Skills Kit combined now with access to EHR records that will allow "healthcare companies [and health systems] to create highly customized services for consumers to use at home." Take the simple example of post-operative wound care. Right now, patients are often discharged with a set of written instructions about wound care at home. Using Alexa, I could envision the same patient querying Alexa on successive days at home about how to care for the wound and even asking about unexpected complications. Not too many health systems will have the resources or interest in developing such apps on their own but small high-tech companies now have a strong financial incentive to do so. The article excerpted above provided the following examples of such apps linked to Alexa, Google, and even home lab testing devices:
- Livongo...focused on managing chronic diseases, sells an Alexa-connected blood glucose monitor that can help diabetes patients track their condition.
- Home health care provider Libertana Home Health...created an Alexa skill that lets elderly or frail residents connect with caregivers, set up reminders about medications, report their weight and blood pressure and schedule appointments.
- Boston Children’s Hospital, which offered the first Alexa healthcare software with ...a [clinical decision support] tool called Kids MD now uses Alexa to share post-surgical recovery data between a patient’s home and the hospital.
Although the Tissue Analytics app appears to be designed for health professional use within healthcare environments, one wonders if a consumer version could be developed to work with Alexa as postulated. https://code.cerner.com/apps/tissue-analytics
What would be even better is the tracking of the wound characteristics that could be communicated to the laboratory if a wound culture were performed or pathology if all or part of the wound were excised. Specimen source (from where a specimen is collected) is very important in these cases
Posted by: Andrea Pitkus, PhD, MLS(ASCP)CM | August 08, 2019 at 08:37 AM