How Amazon hopes Alexa can introduce ‘systemic change’ and improve lives
It’s able to play your favourite Spotify playlist and turn on the heating in your home, just by asking it, but Amazon has grander hopes for its voice-powered virtual assistant Alexa, hoping that it can help introduce “systemic change” and help improve people’s lives.
How Amazon hopes Alexa can introduce ‘systemic change’ and improve lives
Anticipating usage cases for Alexa, Dean Bryen, evangelist, new technologies at Amazon said that he could see potential for the virtual assistant, which is open source, to aid sectors such as healthcare and address issues such as when people are unable to remember to take medication.
“There is a big problem for healthcare called non intentional noncompliance. There is lots of research in to the amount of costs to the NHS, and I think there is a bigger picture there around systemic change,” he told an audience at Mindshare Huddle for Good.
Drawing on an example of a stroke patient with short term memory loss, Bryen said the patient had been bought an Amazon Echo, which is powered by Alexa, and now uses it to remind him to take his daily medication, helping to reduce the amount of care needed and reinstating some independence.
Amazon also sees opportunities in the medical field, for example in an operating theatre when a surgeon’s hands are in use.
A plethora of brands are already working with the Alexa app including Domino’s, Uber, Just Eat and Capital One.