Limitations of Alexa for Telehealth
This is the last post of the series on Alexa. After discussing development-related topics in the past two posts, this post goes back to the path of the first one. I will look again at the user perspective and share some of the opportunity’s and problems when using Alexa for Telehealth.
Recall that in the first post I mentioned that Voice Interfaces are a good fit as interaction via Voice is easier for tech-averse seniors with physical limitations. However, not everything is bright about this. There are two limitations that I want to introduce.
Firstly, from a use case perspective, seniors certainly need extensive reminder functionalities. A logic use case, which I also explored during my project, is to have a web interface for caretakers where they can set custom reminders for medication intake and other activities for the seniors (e.g. their parents). The seniors then get reminded via the Alexa skill. However, this is currently not feasible, as reminders are supported in an insufficient spectrum. The spectrum is only for native Alexa functions. This implies that the senior has to set her reminders via voice, without any possible support through 3rd party applications as the one discussed here. However, improvements are likely for the future.
Secondly, from a voice recognition perspective, there are still some limitations. Although, Alexa’s Natural language processing is already quite sophisticated while testing my project I realised that is having problems with reacting to different wording. Also, it seems that seniors use less typical wordings and pronunciations. Together with the mentioned technology-averseness, this can easily create frustration. However, also this limitation is likely to improve in the future. Nevertheless, despite some limitations, I believe that Alexa is a good solution for Telehealth.
I hope you enjoyed reading my blog series!
About the author:
I am an entrepreneurially-minded MSc. Computer Science student at University College London. Priorly I studied Business and worked in the consulting and StartUp-sphere. This summer, I have the unique opportunity to dive very deep into the topic of Personal Assistants in Telehealth, fully supported by UCL and NHS Digital UK. I want to give back, so I strive to provide unique insights to my readers, from a technical and non-technical perspective.