Amazon’s secret work in digital health reaches new heights
Amazon is in talks for organizing a team to augment its voice-assistant, Alexa to focus on healthcare and wellness.
The largest E-commerce hub, Amazon, has been working to build up a team within Alexa, the voice-assistant tech, aiming to expand into the healthcare sector, as per CNBC reports.
The team is assigned to focus on providing assistance in order to advance Alexa’s healthcare space which deals with chronic disease management.
The primary task of the team will involve working through to navigate the regulations and data privacy requirements as per HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in order to ensure user’s data privacy and regulation.
According to reports by CNBC, the assembled team will be functional in working to make Amazon’s Alexa even more effective in the healthcare sector. The group is set to work towards providing support for new mothers, infants, and diabetic people.
This is not the first time Amazon’s Alexa has played a role to advance in the healthcare area, last year the company reportedly teamed up with Merck in order to develop mobile applications which can use Alexa to help manage patients suffering from Type-2 Diabetes, according to Health Care Dive.
In September 2017 The Mayo Clinic was made available on Alexa to provide basic health information and advice, which serves as a good creator to raise knowledge among people about general health care.
To get self-care instructions, users can voice their queries on the device, which will provide solutions to a wide range of health issues faced every day. This comes to be as a basic first aid advice, which was primarily designed to improve consumer’s health literacy.
Earlier this year, Amazon has shown continued interest in the healthcare space. In order to focus on employee health, the E-commerce Giant had made a deal with JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway. It focuses on the agenda to improve user satisfaction and cost reduced methods, which stands as a clear indication that it was making plans to surf the healthcare sector.
Amazon has been playing in this field since long and now it’s rising up for the realm, given in a survey conducted in April where a group of 300 healthcare stakeholders highly predicted that the top tech company will be progressing in the healthcare sector to expand its horizon.
The team is being led by Rachel Jiang, listed as a senior manager at Alexa Domains. Jiang has worked at Amazon for the past five years holding various roles such as in advertising and video.
The unit grouped together is being referred to as Alexa Domains, as per reports from CNBC. Amazon is yet to confirm this report.
Image credit: developer.amazon.com/alexa
