By Erin Benson

Say What?

Amazon’s “Alexa” has quickly become “part of the family” in millions of American homes. She tells jokes, sings songs, and even distinguishes between family members’ voices. And Alexa has plenty of company in the market including Apple’s Siri and Google Home.

More practically, voice-activated personal assistant devices create shopping and to-do lists, set alarms and timers, provide news and other real-time information, and execute various voice interaction tasks. The technology is enabling business users to join calls, schedule meeting rooms, and perform other functions available through third-party vendors.



In health care, voice activation is demonstrating usefulness in sterile environments, such as operating rooms (OR), where tapping a screen or clicking a mouse is an infection risk.

The incredible potential of voice activation technology in health care will be far more pervasive than just the OR environment. Industry-wide, physicians remain challenged by navigation of patient records and the general administrative burdens of getting things done. The commands of an ideal voice activation solution would enable fewer windows, screens, clicks and keystrokes in daily workflow, translating to hours of found time in a day that could be spent with patients. Both physicians and the patients themselves would benefit significantly from more face-to-face time during care episodes, even if that simply means the provider doesn’t have to turn their back on a patient to type something into a computer.

Patients playing the part
Patients are already using virtual assistants to seek medical advice and information about clinical diagnoses. Other applications would include transmission of patient instructions for post-care, including reminders to take medications and other treatment plan protocols. Voice technology could also assist patients in tracking and reporting various health-related activities, such as blood sugar levels, troublesome symptoms or prescription compliance.

As navigating the health care system becomes more and more complex, patients and providers alike find great comfort in going “back to basics” of speech communication. Voice activation technology enables the exchange of ideas and unfolding of clinician and patient interactions in a natural way.
However, as this new technology emerges – with proponents touting accessibility and simplicity – we must consider how to uphold the privacy of patient information.

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