Amazon Brings Alexa To Hospitals and Senior Living Centers (techcrunch.com) 51
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After already targeting verticals like hotels and apartment complexes, Amazon announced today it's now rolling out new solutions for healthcare providers and senior living centers. The solutions, which are a part of Alexa Smart Properties, are designed specifically to meet the needs of deploying Alexa devices at scale and will allow the facility's administrators to create customized experiences for their residents or patients. In senior living centers, the residents would be able to use Alexa devices to call their family members and other loved ones, as well as keep up with the goings-on at their community and other community news. The devices could also be used to make announcements, allow the residents to communicate with each other through direct audio messages and make voice and video calls, and they can streamline other center activities -- like check-ins, maintenance requests and various administrative tasks. Amazon believes this could help make facilities more efficient and productive. Amazon says senior living communities include Atria and Eskaton will integrate with its new solution.
With Amazon's new solution for hospitals, patients will be able to use Alexa to communicate with care staff, control the devices in their room, and stay entertained with news and music. Healthcare providers can also communicate with their patients using Alexa features like calling and Drop-In, without having to enter the patient rooms. This could also help hospitals be more productive and conserve their medical supplies and protective equipment like gloves, masks and gowns, notes Amazon. (PPE shortages had been an ongoing issue in some locations as COVID spiked during the pandemic.) Though Amazon has struggled with privacy issues related to its use of voice recordings and transcriptions, the healthcare and senior living center solutions will not save the voice recordings and don't require users to share personal info with Alexa to use the device, the company explains. Users can also mute the Echo's microphone at any time with the button on top. Amazon also claims it safeguards protected health information received through HIPAA-eligible Alexa skill interactions. Both of the new Alexa Smart Properties solutions will roll out in the U.S. starting next month, Amazon says.
With Amazon's new solution for hospitals, patients will be able to use Alexa to communicate with care staff, control the devices in their room, and stay entertained with news and music. Healthcare providers can also communicate with their patients using Alexa features like calling and Drop-In, without having to enter the patient rooms. This could also help hospitals be more productive and conserve their medical supplies and protective equipment like gloves, masks and gowns, notes Amazon. (PPE shortages had been an ongoing issue in some locations as COVID spiked during the pandemic.) Though Amazon has struggled with privacy issues related to its use of voice recordings and transcriptions, the healthcare and senior living center solutions will not save the voice recordings and don't require users to share personal info with Alexa to use the device, the company explains. Users can also mute the Echo's microphone at any time with the button on top. Amazon also claims it safeguards protected health information received through HIPAA-eligible Alexa skill interactions. Both of the new Alexa Smart Properties solutions will roll out in the U.S. starting next month, Amazon says.
Better bolt the plug into the wall ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have "smart" listening devices in my home for a reason. I'm gorram sure not going to be quiet about having one planted in the room where I'm discussing details about my healthcare.
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Put a big fluffy pillow over it.
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Oh no! You are worried about Alexa, while the Doctor will record everything on a 20 year old EHR system, that is probably wide open to being hacked, which when you sign you paperwork that data is being sent to your insurance company who may be using 30 or 40 year old infrastructure to pay your bills. Or your doctor is a low tech type of person, so they do their notes on paper, which get jumbled and lost, or flies out the HIPAA bin, when it is dumped to be sent over to the shredder.
Alexa, Siri... are actual
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Oh no! You are worried about Alexa, while the Doctor will record everything on a 20 year old EHR system, that is probably wide open to being hacked,
That ... literally means nothing in terms of whether one can feel uneasy about Alexa etc being used in hospitals.
Re:Better bolt the plug into the wall ... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a whole heaping ton of whataboutism that doesn't address the creepiness of using Alexa to spy on old folks just trying to be comfortable during their final chapter.
Yes, our healthcare system is broken and shitty as fuck. How anyone thinks forcing Alexa into that is going to be an improvement is beyond me.
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Oh no! You are worried about Alexa, while the Doctor will record everything on a 20 year old EHR system
This argument can be summed up as: This ship is already taking on water so what difference does it make if I drill more holes thru the hull below the water line?
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If you're going to hell because of one sin, might as well make it a thousand sins.
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Or it could be, "the only reason I'm FINALLY noticing a problem is because it's Facebook, not because I'm inattentive or didn't give a damn before".
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I've already thought ahead that if these things ever become a medicare condition for senior stay-at-home my senile behavior will show an odd habit of thinking my always-on radio should be right next to the "other electronics". Wherever visiting aides move it.
Alexa Silver (Score:1)
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Well, I don't know about that...
Holocaust Survivors (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only imagine how horrified a Holocaust survivor must feel, after having escaped Nazi death camps, to learn that a device connected to a central authority will be listening to their every word.
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I believe the paranoid call those...cell phones. Won't someone think of the Holocaust survivors?
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People, in general, don't have this expectation, that their phone would be spying on them all the time.
Of course, that expectation is wrong, but still...
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It's wrong because astonishingly for a nerd site most don't understand technology. It's workings and more importantly it's limitations.
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I said "people, in general". Nerds are a tiny minority.
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Being admitted to the hospital, means a large loss of privacy in general. As you are being monitored, 24/7 until you are discharged anyways. You are not going to have a private conversation at the hospital. It is that most of the nurses and doctors are so use to people thinking that they are not listening to them that most of the irrelevant stuff to their work gets ignored.
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Same phenomenon as the one between the rich and their servants. Intelligence agencies have known this for ages.
Yes. (Score:2)
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So if you say something bad about Amazon some goons come out and toss you into a van, never to be heard from again?
Not exactly. It depends what you say about them. But for example if you say "fuck amazon sideways with a chainsaw" then you'll keep seeing ads for chainsaws until you give in and buy one.
patients will be billed $25/day for this service! (Score:4, Funny)
patients will be billed $25/day for this service!
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I think you're missing a zero or two. After all, this is the American health care system. $250/day or $2500/day for "remote assistance fee" is more like it.
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Re:Alexa (Score:4, Funny)
Alexa: "I will now call you Lucifer".
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No mod points or you'd get a funny from me. Legit laughed out loud. Thank you.
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Glad I made someone laugh today!
"I've fallen, and I can't get up!" (Score:3)
Alexa: "Would you like to buy a crane? Here are the most popular models..."
Alexa is great for my grandparents (Score:5, Interesting)
My grandma is 91, and is too old and does not have the motivation to try to learn how to use a computer or tablet. A couple Christmases ago I got her an Echo Dot, because her sister (a few years younger than her) kept saying how much she liked having Alexa play country and gospel music from their youth. Well, it has been a *major* hit with my grandmother. For her, the voice interface is what she requires. It would be this or nothing but her DirecTV. Literally, this is the her first use of a "computer" in her life, and it is a fantastic thing for her.
We've hooked up some lights that she can control with Alexa, and she has experimented and found all kinds of various things she can do. Simple stuff like the weather, to more complex things, like when my son was serving in Africa she would ask Alexa what the time was in the country he was currently in (Niger, Chad, etc).
Anyway, a lot of people are going to diss this for privacy, and because Amazon is evil incarnate, etc. However I think Alexa (and alternatives like Siri, etc) is a very, very awesome thing for many seniors, and opens them up to information and capabilities they would not have otherwise. Period.
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Absolutely, that's why the Apple Knowledge Navigator video was popular because it captured what could be. Technology in service to the common folk. Siri* and Cortana as well as the Google assistant.
*Even thinking of enabling this for a senior since they're having so much difficulty with the basics.
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How dare you paint these devices in a positive light. This is slashdot goddammit.
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If only NLP didn't require data.
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Tell me about your grandchildren (Score:2)
Conversation overheard:
Alexa: Happy 95th birthday Mrs. Smith. Do you have grandkids? Tell me about them. Are any overseas? Do they like to party?
This all seems pretty creepy.
story reads like an advertisment (Score:2)
Like it came straight from a marketing flunky, but then it did, didn't it?
I'm wondering what Amazon's end game is. They are lying. They are going to listen in, they are going to figure out how to monetize what they learn, but I haven't quite figured out what form that will take.
Also , this is what it looks like when your healthcare system is for-profit.
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Monetization happens because people don't like paying for things. But if the hospital is paying for it, and by extension, you then there's less incentive to mine especially in an environment that's a lawyers wet dream.
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Although you include the quote, "Absolute statements are never true", your post is absolutely true. We are not the customers and Amazon will exploit this in ways we can't imagine.
Isn't it illegal to pray on the weak? (Score:4, Insightful)
patients will be able to use Alexa to communicate with care staff, control the devices in their room, and stay entertained with news and music.
And no doubt rape the elderly people's privacy thoroughly and without restraint on the basis that they'll have no choice if they want to call the nurse or turn the TV on.
I call BS (Score:3)
Amazon Brings Alexa To Hospitals and Senior Living Centers
Alexa is sick by definition - but there's no way it's old enough to to be eligible seniors' accommodations.
DDR: Been there done that (Score:2)
The Lives of Others [imdb.com]
"It's broke and I can't get up!" (Score:1)
This will just turn nursing homes into tech support when users get confused or features that they got used to suddenly stop working.
Some useful ideas -- too bad it's Amazon's device (Score:2)
A lot of what Amazon is proposing sounds great for aging seniors. There's certainly room for innovation in this arena. I bought an Apple Homepod a couple of years ago, hoping it would be useful for my parents. I was surprised that there wasn't a way (at least at that time) to get it to automatically announce calendar items or reminders to take medications. I finally sold the device because they rarely used it, partly because they could remember to say "Hey Siri" when addressing the device. Given Amazon's ul
But is it the Silver edition? (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvT_gqs5ETk
And yet, for a decade AMAZON has refused to allow (Score:3)
Alexa or anything else to let voice commands turn pages on a kindle or the kindle app on a tablet or laptop. Purposely excluded from the API for unknown reasons. This change alone would be patient centric and not sales centered or control oriented.