The virtual assistant Alexa developed by Amazon, joins with the UK National Health Service (NHS) to offer users the resolution of medical ailments questions with the information authority of one of its most trusted institutions.
It has become a global premise that the NHS secured an alliance with Alexa, to provide users with verified health information. The goal is to reliably guide and empower patients, but without being taken as medical advice and preventing them from going to health centers where necessary.
The operational mode is simple, Alexa will receive any questions from the patients and will automatically process it with its algorithm and access the database of the official website of the British health agency, NHS, to generate a query and deliver the answer in real time. Simple answers to questions like "how to stop migraine?" or "what are the smallpox symptoms?" may be given.
Health Director Matt Hancock says, "The partnership with Alexa is to empower patients, and that they can make decisions about their health, coupled with allowing access from the comfort of their home."
The project seeks to reduce the number of face-to-face medical consultations and reach more people, although some claim that the cost of the devices does not allow the digital divide to be broken.
One highly benefited sector is visually weak, older adults, and people with different abilities, who will be able to do voice searches to verify information and receive notifications creating empathy between patients and their medical history.
However, the inclusion of new technologies always has a delicate side, in this case it is related to information security and data privacy; even more so when sensitive data such as user diseases.
In this case, the Alexa Health Council has been collaborating since 2017 with global institutions for the development and implementation of its artificial intelligence technology on health-related issues. It is set in the crosshairs when it is a state service (NHS) that partners with a foreign technology provider and privacy activists demand information about the operating model. Amazon ensures that users are not being profiled based on their health issues and that they have full autonomy over the stored information, so they can delete any recordings at any time they decide.
At this level, the trust in privacy becomes indispensable to success in adopting technology.
