Amazon's Alexa now manages patient health information



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Today, Amazon has announced that six companies and healthcare providers will allow customers to access some of their personalized medical information by interacting with Alexa compatible devices. This announcement marks another major advance for Amazon in the healthcare industry.

In the United States, the main Health Protection Act, the 1996 Transferability and Health Insurance Plan Liability Act (HIPAA), generally ensures that medical information can only be shared between patients and those in the health system, such as doctors or hospitals. In other words, information such as medical diagnoses and pharmacy prescriptions are not available to third parties. Now, Amazon claims to have created a way for companies to transmit this information via Alexa-enabled devices and remain compliant with the HIPAA standard. He invited six healthcare companies to develop vocal programs – which Amazon describes as "skills" – using their systems. This evolution has already been reported by CNBC and Stat News.

"These new skills are designed to help clients manage a variety of home health care needs, simply by using the voice – that it's all about setting up a medical appointment," he says. access the hospital's post-discharge instructions, check the status of the delivery of an order, etc. Alexa Health and Wellness Rachel Jiang wrote in a blog post.

Of the six skills launched today, Express Scripts customers can use Alexa to check the delivery status of their prescriptions. Livongo customers can connect Alexa to their blood glucose meters and ask questions about their blood glucose levels. Patients in the Boston Children's Hospital's ERAS program can receive information about appointments via Alexa. Jiang added that although the program is currently accessible only by invitation, the company hopes to increase the number of health developers using Alexa in the future.

For Amazon, this is one of its largest movements to date in healthcare, worth $ 3.5 trillion. Last June, she purchased the PillPack online pharmacy and in November announced plans to sell software that reads medical records.

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