What Happened
After releasing an Alexa skill called KidsMD last month that dispenses healthcare advice for parents with sick kids, Boston Children’s Hospital is planning to further integrate the voice-activated virtual assistant into its daily operations. The hospital and its sibling facilities are working to “bring Alexa into patient rooms, help doctors take notes, read back charts, and more,” according to a spokesperson.
During a recent demo at its simulation center, the hospital staff set up three mocked-up rooms — an operating room, an intensive care unit, and a child’s bedroom — to demonstrate how Alexa may assist in medical and healthcare domains. While the demo session revealed some potential drawbacks of Alexa, as it occasionally misunderstood commands and frustrated doctors, it nevertheless offers a hopeful glimpse into the future of healthcare aided by voice-activated tools.
What Healthcare Brands Need To Do
Hands-free interactions enabled by voice interfaces are a natural fit for hospitals, as doctors and healthcare practitioners would be relieved from some manual tasks in order to focus on their patients. For brands, however, this kind of interface presents new challenges in discovery as they only present limited options upon requests. Therefore, healthcare brands should be proactive in experimenting with voice-activated devices via deep integrations or partnerships.
The Lab currently has extensive experience working with brands to develop Alexa skills and incorporating them into brand strategies. So get in touch or schedule a visit to the Lab if you’d like to learn more about how to reach your audience via conversational interfaces. For more information on this topic, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.
Source: Stat News
