Amazon Enhances Alexa for mHealth Platforms in Hospitals, Senior Homes

Amazon is ramping up its connected health platform with new services designed to expand Alexa’s capabilities in healthcare organizations and senior living facilities.

Offered through the Alexa Smart Properties business line, the services aim to give Alexa-enabled mHealth devices more opportunities to interact with both care providers and seniors – two distinct populations primed to take advantage of AI chatbots. The new services are designed to enhance in-hospital telemedicine platforms as well as telehealth services for seniors living independently.

“We believe the intuitive and accessible nature of voice and Alexa has the potential to help and delight customers in many scenarios, in and outside of the home,” Liron Torres, head of Amazon’s Alexa Smart Properties unit, said in a press release. “We’re excited to extend the experiences customers already love to senior living communities and healthcare systems, and give providers new ways to save time and personalize care for their patients and residents.”

The healthcare provider platform has been enhanced to enable hospital staff to communicate more easily and efficiently with patients, reducing the need to have patients press a call button repeatedly to summon nurses to a room. Through Echo devices stationed in the hospital, staff can communicate with patients in their rooms, while patients can access customized information ranging from cafeteria menus to podcasts.

"Voice is intuitive for patients, regardless of age or tech savviness," Peachy Hain, executive director of medical and surgical services at the Cedars-Sinai health system, said in the Amazon press release. "Since it's so easy to operate, patients can use Alexa to connect with their care team and stay entertained as soon as they settle in, while care providers can streamline tasks to make more time to care for those patients. It's a total game-changer for enhancing our hospital experience."

Cedars-Sinai is among several health systems that have been experimenting with Alexa and other digital health platforms for years, with the Los Angeles-based health system launching a project in 2019 aimed at allowing patients to use Alexa to control technology in their hospital rooms. Other health systems using the platform include Boston Children’s Hospital, Northwell Health, Houston Methodist, BayCare and Lowell General Hospital, whose 2019 project sought to turn the platform into an mHealth coach for patients discharged home after knee replacement surgery.

More recently, healthcare organizations have sought help from Amazon and others for tasks inside the hospital, especially those made more difficult by the pandemic. Through the platform, hospitals can reduce traffic in and out of patient rooms – thus reducing the chance of infection and the use of PPE as well as reducing stress on hospital staff – while also improving the patient experience through better and quicker communications and access to resources.

The senior living and home health space has long been interesting in this mHealth platform as well, envisioning Alexa and others like it as a healthcare resource as well as a means of staying in touch with family and friends and reducing loneliness.

Amazon’s enhancements in this arena include personalized services for both senior living facility staff and the residents themselves. Staff can use th4 platform to check in on residents, alert them to upcoming events and check on administrative and maintenance tasks, while residents can contact family and friends and access calendars and schedules.

“We’ve consistently moved to put our residents in the position to live their best lives, now,” John A. Moore, chairman and CEO of Atria Senior Living, said in the Amazon press release. “Technology has played a critical role in this effort. When you combine our resident and family app with the deployment of Alexa Smart Properties in our communities, seniors have an even greater ability to write the next chapter of their lives through easy-to-use technology that keeps them engaged and connected to their families at all times.”

“Voice integration has the power to transform how resident requests are made and how staff respond,” added Kim Judd, general manager of Lifeline Senior Living. “Adding Alexa Smart Properties functionality to our CarePoint resident safety system enables residents to make hands-free help requests and receive verbal confirmation to know they’ve been heard. And staff can see the context of requests and triage more efficiently. It opens up new opportunities for better care, from simple requests to daily announcements, resident check-ins, even helping to ease social isolation.”

The technology is likely to become even more popular as senior living facilities and health systems move more services into the home, through remote patient monitoring and other platforms.

“It becomes a companion,” Debra Harrison, RN, manager of public subsidized housing for Los Angeles-based Libertana, said in a 2018 interview with mHealthIntelligence on her work with Alexa. “It gives them a (round-the-clock) link to a caregiver while still giving them back their independence.”