US hospitals seek out the killer Amazon Alexa app
Hospitals in the US are tinkering with Alexa apps for things like safety checklists
Amazon Echo devices are fun and useful applications for consumers in the home. But in the hospital, such voice recognition technology has the potential to save lives.
Developers at top hospitals and medical clinics across the US are tinkering with Amazon Alexa and other voice technologies for a variety of applications. Some are working with Alexa to deliver routine medical information to patients at home; others are using it to help surgeons complete lists of tasks.
“There are some massive voice applications that will be built for health enterprises,” John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, told CNBC.
Physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital are researching how text-to-speech technology can be useful in helping surgeons comply with surgical safety checklists in the operating room.
Raul Uppot, a radiologist at the hospital, told CNBC that in one case a patient was listening in to the safety checklist via a voice application right before going under. The patient had an allergy to latex, a fact that was missing from the medical record, but was addressed thanks to the checklist.
That might have averted disaster, as the surgeons had intended to use latex gloves.