Amazon Alexa is HIPAA-compliant: bigger leap in the health care sector

Amazon has been exploring itself in the health care sector since quite some time now. Just last year, Amazon bought the online pharmacy PillPack for $1 billion in order to sell the prescription drugs. The company introduced Amazon Comprehend Medical, a machine learning tool that allows users to extract relevant clinical information from the unstructured text in patient records. Amazon is even working with Accenture and Merck to develop a cloud-based platform for collaborators across the life sciences industry with a motive to bring innovation in the drug development research.

Amazon has now taken a bigger leap by announcing its voice assistant, Alexa as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant, which means that it can work with health care and medical software developers in order to invent new programs or skills with voice and provide better experiences to their customers.

With the help of Amazon Alexa, developers will design new skills to help customers manage their healthcare needs at home by simply using voice. Patients will now be able to book a medical appointment, access the hospital post-discharge instructions or check on the status of a prescription delivery, and much more just via the voice!

HIPAA has been designed to protect patients in cases where their personal health information is shared with health care organizations such as hospitals. This will allow healthcare companies to build Alexa voice tools capable of securely transmitting the patient’s private information.

The consumers will now be able to use new Alexa health skills for asking questions such as “Alexa, pull up my blood glucose readings” or “Alexa, find me a doctor,” and will receive a response from the voice assistant.

The company further announced the launch of six voice programs including Express Scripts, My Children's Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS), Cigna Health Today, Swedish Health Connect, Atrium Health, and Livongo. These new tools allow patients to use Alexa for accessing personalized information such as prescription, progress updates after surgery, and much more.

Rachel Jiang, a member of Amazon’s health and wellness team, who previously worked at Microsoft and Facebook announced that Amazon has invited six healthcare partners to use its HIPAA-compliant skills kit to build voice programs. But the company expects to get more healthcare providers on board to access its information.

Jiang wrote in a post, “These new skills are designed to help customers manage a variety of healthcare needs at home simply using voice – whether it’s booking a medical appointment, accessing hospital post-discharge instructions, checking on the status of a prescription delivery, and more.”

Boston Children’s Hospital now has a new HIPAA-compliant skill dubbed “ERAS” for kids that are discharged from the hospital and for their families. With the help of Alexa’s voice assistant, patients and their families or caregivers can now ask questions to the care team about their case. Even the doctors can now remotely check in on the child’s recovery process.

Livongo, a digital health start-up, works with employers in order to help them in managing workers with chronic medical conditions. Livongo developed a skill for people with diabetes that uses connected glucometers that would ask about the patient’s blood sugar levels.

In a statement to CNBC, Livongo’s president Jenny Schneider told that “There are lots of reasons she expects users to embrace voice technologies, versus SMS messaging or other platforms. Some of those people might have difficulty reading, or they just have busy lives and it’s just an easy option.”

Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit management organization is working towards building a way for members to check the status of their home delivery prescription via Alexa.

Voice technology has been booming in the health care sector and skills like the ones mentioned above will bring health care to home and make the patients lives easy and cost-effective.

John Brownstein, chief innovation officer for Boston Children’s Hospital, said, “We’re in a renaissance of voice technology and voice assistants in health care. It’s so appealing as there’s very little training, it’s low cost and convenient.”

To know more about this news, check out Amazon’s official announcement.

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