Voice Technology Can Improve Healthcare Engagement

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Jennifer Warner, Senior Editor at Mayo Clinic, from the Amazon Alexa VOICE Summit at NJIT, to explain how voice-activated technology is improving the way patients engage with healthcare.

9/25/18 #2167

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Hi, this is Steve Adubato coming to you from the campus of NJIT - that's the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Why are we here? This is, in fact, the Voice Summit, sponsored by Amazon Alexa. You've got about 2,500 folks from all over the country, programmers, people involved in something called artificial intelligence, all about voice. What does voice mean in our lives today? What could, and what will, voice mean in our lives tomorrow? That's what the people are here talking about at NJIT, at this Voice Summit. We'll be interviewing those folks and bringing everything you've ever wanted and needed to know about voice to you right now. Jennifer Warner, Senior Editor at the Mayo Clinic. By the way, tell everyone what Mayo Clinic is all about. Well, we've been around for you know... I don't... maybe you've heard of it? We've been around. [laughter] Pretty good brand. [laughter] And reputation. Right. Well... and we've been around for over 150 years and we really see our reason for getting into voice is that we've always put the needs of the patient first. And so throughout the... our long history, we've always evolved in different ways to get information and healthcare to people where they are and when they need it most. Let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah. Because so many people are going on the internet to try to get information, if not diagnose what they think is going on... How is this different? Well, we've developed several different voice activated pr... voice enabled initiatives. We have those directly facing patient care, I work with ones facing consumers.So if you ask Alexa or another voice enabled device, you know, "What is diabetes?" "How is this treated?" You can get trusted health... first party health information from... What do you mean "first party"? Break that down. Well, that's something new, that we're just... we're working with various, you know, voice enabled device producers and we're working to get more and more of our content directly to the consumer, so you're not just getting a web-based search result, so you know where the information is coming from, so you can rely on that information. And also we have a Mayo Clinic first-aid skill for Alexa. So you can get that skill, and that addresses about 50 of your most common things. You get a cut or a scrape or a burn or your child has a fever, and you can get that same trusted, first party, you know, health Mayo Clinic information to guide you, where and when you need it most. What are most people looking for? They're... you know, they're looking for trusted health information. You can get information anywhere, but where..."