“Alexa, unlock the front door.”

“Siri, where’s the nearest Thai food place?”

Voice assistants are becoming more prominent in today’s lifestyle. Alexa, Siri and Cortana are on standby 24/7 to help us with everything from telling us the time to turning our security systems off and on, keeping us on track with to-do lists and shopping lists, and much, much more. So it’s no surprise that healthcare developers are looking at ways to incorporate voice assistance technology into healthcare settings.

The promise and pitfalls of voice assistants in healthcare were discussed by a panel of three developers at the recent Connected Health Conference in Boston. Nathan Treloar, president and COO of Orbita; Anne Weiler, cofounder and CEO of Wellpepper; and Andy Kropa, founder of SoundMind Intelligence offered these observations:

• Voice is a more natural way of engaging with technology. And a more conversational style is more natural in healthcare settings. Patients have a strong need to be heard and voice can help patients to feel cared for with empathy.
• A perfect storm, of sorts, is leading to the rise of voice technology: increasing ease of use, price point and increasing ubiquity of the technology. The widespread development and use of mobile technology has helped to pave the way for adoption of voice technology.
• The potential for data collection with voice technology is great and healthcare organizations are always on the hunt for more data on their patients.

• Developers cannot use a cut-and-paste approach to develop voice apps for healthcare use. Simply copying a long-form web article into an app isn’t effective because of the differences in reading and voice. People want to interact, not be lectured to.
• Careful thought is required to effectively translate web content to voice apps. For example, a health assessment that asks which symptoms a person is having cannot have a 50-item list of symptoms, as it would be too difficult for the patient to comprehend in a meaningful way.
• Not everyone speaks the same – there are accents, colloquialisms and other alternate speaking patterns. People often mispronounce the names of health conditions and medications.