The Many Benefits of Smart Speakers Today
When introduced properly, smart speakers can offer ample benefits across healthcare. The devices found in patient rooms can perform many of the same common functions they would in a person’s home, such as changing the volume or channel on a TV or changing the room temperature.
Gaarde mentions that in some rooms, smart speakers can also control curtains and lighting, and can even be used to “play soothing music or something else that patients want to enjoy to make it a more personal experience.”
A pilot program at Cedars-Sinai demonstrates smart speaker capabilities that go beyond completing routine tasks, enabling patients to call for nurses or make requests for things like water or medication.
By implementing an Alexa-powered platform called Aiva in over 100 patient rooms, patients of the Los Angeles-based healthcare system are encouraged to interact hands-free with nurses. Patient requests made via smart speaker are automatically directed to the appropriate caregiver’s mobile phone.
For example, medication requests are sent to a registered nurse, whereas a bathroom request would route to a clinical partner. When patient requests are not resolved quickly enough, the voice assistant platform sends the notification up the command chain.
Smart speakers are being used by caregivers as well. The devices let physicians look up information vocally without needing to type or touch anything, thus keeping scrubbed-in hands clean.
“When you're in the middle of a procedure, you need to remain sterile, so you lose the ability to use a computer," said Dr. Kevin Seals, a fellow in interventional radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, in a study published by Society of Interventional Radiology. "This smart speaker technology helps us to quickly and intelligently make decisions relevant to a patient's specific needs."