Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Amazon's Alexa Deployed Across Patient Rooms At Cedars-Sinai

In what looks like the first, large scale deployment of voice-driven, personal assistants across a healthcare setting, Los Angeles-based healthcare provider Cedars-Sinai said on Monday that it has deployed Amazon's Alexa voice assistant across more than 100 patient rooms at the hospital. According to Cedars-Sinai, the pilot program lets patients both drive healthcare requests--such as requesting help to go to the restroom--as well as control in-room entertainment, such as turning a TV on or off, changing the channel, or listening to music. According to Cedars Sinai, it is using an Alexa-powered platform called Aiva to enable the voice-interaction with both nurses and their entertainment. Aiva was one of the startups which was part of the the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, the hospital's startup accelerator effort, in 2017; Cedars-Sinai said that since then, Aiva has received funding from both the Google Assistant Investment Program and Amazon's Alexa Fund.