The Significance of the Alexa HIPAA-Compliance News
Earlier this week, Teri Fisher published an episode of his Voice First Health podcast that was a compilation of eight different perspectives (plus Teri’s) on what the news surrounding Alexa becoming HIPAA-compliant meant to them. The folks that contributed their input to Teri’s Podcast were:
- Nate Treleor – President of Orbita
- Bianca Phillips – Founder of Electronic Health Consulting Group
- Yours Truly
- Heidi Culbertson – – Founder/CEO of Ask Marvee
- Dr. Neel Desai – Co-founder of MedFlash Go
- Stuart Patterson – CEO of Lifepod Solutions
- Timon LeDain – Director of Emerging Technologies at Macadamian Technologies
- Dave Isbitski – Chief Evangelist of Amazon Alexa
- Dr. Teri Fisher – Creator of the Alexa in Canada and Voice First Health podcasts and websites
Everyone had something unique and interesting to say. Some, like Nate Treleor, mentioned how significant this development was to their business (a secure platform for creating voice-enabled virtual assistants for the healthcare industry). While others, like Stuart Patterson, offered a different take, stating that it wasn’t as significant of a development as it would appear considering that the company Nuance has offered HIPAA-Compliant voice technology for years.
Some of my favorite comments from this podcast:
Heidi Culbertson: “I think this move by Amazon is one small step for voice, and one large step for making life better. I think its a huge opportunity for innovation and partnership among health organizations and third party development and design shops. Innovation happens and this is a really exciting time.”
Dr. Neel Desai: “This will help to cut down on all the telephone calls back and forth between the patients and the doctors. This is a great short cut that will improve communication and save time.”
Dr. Teri Fisher: “One of the things that I’m very excited about, even before the HIPAA announcement, is the idea that voice technology allows us to communicate with computers in the most natural way we know. I’m of the opinion that in the future we’re each going to have mini clinics in our home that are run by a voice-first device and its going to create a personalized, decentralized approach to healthcare. I believe this is the big next step in doing that.”
There’s clearly a lot of excitement around this development in the voice technology space and it’s going to be pretty fascinating to watch how this all unfolds at the intersection of healthcare and voice. This was an important first step in making this all become a reality and as the gates open to the developer and design communities, we’re sure to have a lot of new applications and use cases flourish.
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
