Alexa for Health Practitioners

Abstract

Many industries, including healthcare, are trying to take advantage of voice assistant systems by incorporating their technology into the industries’ environment. However, not many companies or researchers have successfully integrated this technology into the daily practice of healthcare practitioners. Doctors, nurses and other healthcare practitioners spend much of their interaction time with patients clicking on the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) screen trying to access and update data. An important contribution of this research is to analyze this healthcare need for this technology in the healthcare practitioner’s workflow. This research developed an Alexa chatbot skill, “Doctor’s Assistant,” as a generic application to help healthcare practitioners access and update EMR data via speech, while reducing data entry time and providing better patient care. The evaluation of this application illustrates that the “Doctor’s Assistant” skill is both effective and accurate.