6 Questions for Teri Fisher (Voice in Health Part 1)
The founder of Voice First Health provides a #VoiceFirst checkup…
1. Hi Teri. Thanks for chatting! So, you’re a VUI designer working in the health field. Tell us about how you got into this space, and what you’re up to now.
Teri Fisher: I am a physician at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I’ve always been very interested in technology, healthcare, and education, and whenever I have the opportunity to combine these three passions, I jump at them.
When I first learned of voice technology a few years ago I searched for some resources to educate myself on what was happening in the field. I couldn’t find any reliable and unbiased resources so I decided to launch the blog and podcast, Voice First Health, to do just that, and document what is going on at the intersection of voice technologies and healthcare. Now I interview people from various organizations, hospitals, and institutions to report on the interesting research and news about this rapidly expanding field of technology. I do some consulting, and I also very much enjoy traveling to speak about this exciting are. In fact, I recently gave a TEDx talk about how voice is the new operation system of our healthy lives.
2. It’s been said that voice technology is beneficial to people of more advanced age, as eyesight declines over time and tends to “go” before one’s hearing does. What are your thoughts here? Are such claims overstated (or perhaps understated)?
Teri Fisher: In my view, it is not so much about declining eyesight or hearing, but simply the fact that the learning curve to use voice technology is so small. Because using our voice is such a natural way of communicating with a computer, the older population is embracing this technology at an extremely rapid rate. There is essentially no new technology for this population to learn [emphasis added]. If you can speak, you can use the tech. I think that this is one of the most important factors that has caused voice technology devices to be adopted at a rate faster than any other consumer technology devices in our history.
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3. People feel more comfortable divulging their medical issues to a conversational AI than a real person, because they’re allegedly less judge-y. Is this something you’ve witnessed and can corroborate?
Teri Fisher: Yes! This is a very interesting observation. Patients can often feel apprehensive about sharing some of their innermost feelings with a human being because the patients can fear that they might be judged. However, when the person speaks with a voice assistant, there is no fear of judgment whatsoever. As a result, people often do feel more inclined to share more private thoughts with a smart speaker. Interestingly, on the other hand, one of the most often quoted concerns about voice assistants is that you can lose the human touch. I think it all comes down to how empathic these voice assistants can be. If they are designed to be extremely robotic and do not relate to the person, I can certainly understand how losing the human touch can be an issue.
Ultimately, the user will have to decide between feeling more comfortable sharing their thoughts with a device and potentially forgoing some of the empathy, or speaking with a human being, experiencing more empathy, but potentially be met with a judgmental reaction.
4. Virtual assistants are generally more ambitious than mere chatbots, with the latter more circumscribed in their purpose and functionality. With this in mind, it seems to me that the notion of “bedside manner” — the soft skills that accompany the hard skill of medical training — better fits a virtual assistant; one that can engage in small talk and utilize more empathic awareness. Any thoughts on this?
Teri Fisher: This very much relates to the previous question. Whether or not a smart speaker is more or less ambitious than a chatbot really goes into how the devices have been programmed. In theory, either device could be developed with a sense of empathy depending on how responses to particular comments are designed. I think smart speakers tend to be seen as being more empathic because the conversations tend to be more open-ended. This allows for the possibility of more personal conversations and perhaps more empathy. But again, it all goes back to how the device was setup.
5. Where do Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri fit into the world of healthcare-oriented conversational AI? Though your’e an Alexa partisan (lol), which virtual assistant, in your estimation, is best poised to e.g. aid someone in that dreadful moment they’re suffering a medical emergency?
Teri Fisher: The short answer is time will tell. However the fact that Amazon has made strides in making sure that Alexa is HIPAA compliant shows that they are very much focused on healthcare applications. As well, when you consider that Jeff Bezos at Amazon has purchased a pharmaceutical company and is creating his own healthcare plan for employees, there are a lot of hints that suggest that Amazon is very serious about the healthcare industry. I can envision a future where a person will receive their health care at home through Alexa, and any healthcare devices or medications that are required will be able to be ordered through Amazon and then be delivered within an hour by a drone.
Amazon has positioned itself extremely well for the future of healthcare. This is not to say that the other companies are not doing this behind-the-scenes, but we just don’t see the same signs at this point.
6. The university system is very much involved in medical research, be it Stanford Medicine or Johns Hopkins University. Which, if any, schools are experimenting with voice tech for medicine, and what are your thoughts on it?
Teri Fisher: It seems that almost everyday I’m hearing about another school or organization that is experimenting in voice technology for healthcare. The opportunities here are incredible. Some of the early leaders are actually some of the hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic, and Boston Children’s Hospital. I’m also hearing about new applications for voice technology on an almost daily basis. One area that fascinates me is vocal biomarkers, the use of your voice signals to detect diseases. Another very interesting aspect of this is the Voiceome project, which is collecting a giant database of voice samples to help determine if these can be used to detect diseases, similar to the genome project that we had done in the past.
