I have posted a number of notes pertaining to wearables and wearable health ecosystems (see, for example: Sony Develops Health Wearable Providing Connectivity, Stipulating That It's Not a Smartwatch; The Evolution of "Wearable Health Ecosystems" and Associated Partnerships; Status Reports and Hospital Referrals from Wearable Health Ecosystems). I have not yet raised the issue of providing a virtual personal assistant (VPS) with these home-based health systems. This idea was discussed in a recent article (see: Wearables Hold the Key to Connected Health Monitoring) and below is an excerpt from it:
As voice interaction with virtual personal assistants (VPAs) becomes standard on consumer devices and wearables, their functionality will become more personalized, opening up new opportunities for healthcare services. Some services will come straight from the next generation of AI features and could include alerts to health professionals or designated caregivers, as well as predictive algorithms to help prevent or manage lifestyle diseases such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Gartner estimates that by 2020, no-touch user interfaces (UIs) will account for about 15% of personal devices, wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints. A more natural product interface delivered with voice, movement and gesture will increase ease of use and help bring devices into mainstream healthcare use cases.
I had not heard the term no-touch user interface as a synonym for a virtual personal assistant but it makes perfect sense. Consumers are growing increasingly comfortable with the use of virtual assistants in their homes using technology like Amazon Echo Dots. Such virtual assistants will obviously be integrated into our home health technology (see: The Evolution of "Wearable Health Ecosystems" and Associated Partnerships). They can remind us in a non-threatening way when we need to take certain health measurements such as blood pressure or take our prescribed medications (see: Cigna Unveils App to Monitor and Improve Medication Adherence).
Under dire circumstances such as a fall or extreme change in health status, the virtual assistant can also call for outside help. Virtual assistants can also be used to scan the web for suitable medical advice when queried. I have referred to this as "paging Dr. Google" or "Dr. Alexa" in older notes (see: Dr. Alexa Will See You now -- An Extension of Paging Dr. Google). Virtual assistants can also be programmed to only seek information from most reliable web sites and will thus improve the quality of the information being sought.
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