Early Experiences with Ambient Listening Devices (Alexa and Google Home)

BIDMC has a long tradition of testing speculative technologies with the notion that breakthroughs often require tolerance for failure.  For example, we ’ve embraced blockchain in healthcare because we believe public ledgers have promise to unify medical records across institutions.Over the past few months, we ’ve developed healthcare applications for Alexa, Amazon’s ambient listening device that combines natural language processing and easy to use application program interfaces.  We have also tried Google Home.Here ’s our experience thus far.1. We ’ve used Alexa in a pilot inpatient setting (not real patients).  Here are the questions/use cases we ’ve implemented with back end interaction to our operational systems.Alexa, ask BIDMCWhat ’s my room numberWho ’s on my care team or List my care teamWhat is my diet or What can I eatCall a nurse  or  I need a nurse or Send in a nurseGive me some inspiration or Inspire meI need spiritual care  or  Request spiritual careI need a social worker  or  Request social workWhat ' s my care plan for today or What are my planned activities for todayOk, thanks  or  Stop  or  You can stop2. Sentiment analysisWhat is sentiment analysis - the process of computationally identifying and categorizing opinions expressed, especially in order to determine whether the author ’s attitude towards a particular topic, product, etc....
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs