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Catch a little cold, catch a little headache, and we'll check WebMD.

We are all guilty of it – googling our symptoms – instead of having a doctor's appointment. Well, Amazon has gone one step further.

UK users can now seek medical advice from Amazon's Alexa, with the Ministry of Health announcing Amazon's partnership with the National Health Services (NHS).

Alexa will have access to the NHS choice website for when users list their symptoms. According to the UK Ministry of Health, this partnership will help reduce demand from the NHS.

According to Health Secretary Matt Hanbad, one of the goals of the partnership is to reduce the pressure on generalists and pharmacists. It also aims to encourage patients to better control their health care.

He also pointed out that the new technology does not encourage patients to cancel doctor's appointments. It is always important for patients to consult their general practitioner if this is necessary.

"Right now, there are people all over the country already turning to Alexa for medical advice. For the moment, they receive everything the Internet throws at them. In the future, through this collaboration, they will get the advice of the NHS, "said Hanbad in an interview in News from the sky.

A report of The edge confirmed that the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) in the United Kingdom supported this idea. However, he stressed the need for an independent body to verify that Alexa was providing the best advice.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, President of the RCGP, said: "Independent research is essential to ensure the safety of the advice provided, otherwise it may prevent people from seeking appropriate medical help and creating even more pressure. on our oversized GP service.

The decision to integrate Alexa is another step in integrating voice search technology into the lives of users. Since the launch of Apple's Siri, voice search has become the norm. according to The telegraph, experts predict that 50% of Internet searches will be conducted using voice badistance technology by 2020.

Prior to this team, Alexa collects medical responses based on popular searches on the Internet. There is also a WebMD Alexa skills that users can activate, which would browse the pages of WebMD for any medical question.

Data privacy issues

Some concerns have been raised that Amazon, an e-commerce giant, has access to NHS medical records. One of them is the confidentiality of the data. Two leak scenarios of data privacy can be identified. One relates directly to the NHS files, and the other is user information each time they use Alexa.

Big Brother Watch, a civil liberty group, shared the criticism of the partnership. According to Silkie Carlo, director of the organization, "this is a disaster in data protection".

Each patient is protected by the doctor-patient privilege that allows medical secrecy for any communication between a patient and his doctor. Thus, if a third-party organization has access to NHS personal health data records, it may be more prone to piracy leading to the leakage of such data.

Health Secretary Hanbad defended speculation about data privacy in an interview with News from the sky. Hanbad reminded everyone that confidentiality rules were in place to ensure that patient data would not be used for commercial purposes.

Amazon supported Hanbad's defense. According to a report in The temperature, Amazon reiterated that it did not share information with third parties and did not create a profile of Alexa users.

"All data was encrypted and kept confidential. Customers control their voice history and can review or delete records, "said a spokeswoman for Amazon.

Self-diagnosis and Cyberchondrie

In addition to data privacy issues, the possibility of obtaining medical advice from Alexa raises another concern, namely the possible increase in the number of people who contract cyberchondria among its users.

Cyberchondria, sometimes known as compuchondria, is the growing concern about Google's search for symptoms.

According to Kelli Harding, a psychiatrist for health anxiety and an badistant professor of psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center, "Cyberchondria is the new frontier of hypochondria."

Cyberchondria is one of the most exposed users of cyberchondria. Concerned mothers often observe in their child's symptoms the fear that disturbing pediatricians with their millions of questions will eventually lead physicians to dispel their concerns. Googling the symptoms often worsens the mother's anxiety and does not help her in this situation.

Another concern is that users of the Alexa-NHS collaboration project will make them too independent and rely on self-diagnosis.

Hanbad repeats: "Of course, you should always be able to see your doctor face-to-face if you wish. [and] if that is necessary; but we also use technology. "