Readiness for voice assistants to support healthcare delivery during a health crisis and pandemic

Sezgın, Emre; Huang, Yungui; Ramtekkar, Ujjwal; Lin, Simon

doi:10.1038/s41746-020-00332-0

Cited by 107 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Last, public health organizations should partner with technology companies to encourage the delivery of medical care through VAs [ 33 ]. In the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot service (text-based) to deliver a relevant and up-to-date information and self-assessment mechanism to the public [ 34 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clinical Advice by Voice Assistants on Postpartum Depression: Cross-Sectional Investigation Using Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana

Yang¹,

Lee²,

Sezgın³

et al. 2021

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

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Background A voice assistant (VA) is inanimate audio-interfaced software augmented with artificial intelligence, capable of 2-way dialogue, and increasingly used to access health care advice. Postpartum depression (PPD) is a common perinatal mood disorder with an annual estimated cost of $14.2 billion. Only a small percentage of PPD patients seek care due to lack of screening and insufficient knowledge of the disease, and this is, therefore, a prime candidate for a VA-based digital health intervention. Objective In order to understand the capability of VAs, our aim was to assess VA responses to PPD questions in terms of accuracy, verbal response, and clinically appropriate advice given. Methods This cross-sectional study examined four VAs (Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana) installed on two mobile devices in early 2020. We posed 14 questions to each VA that were retrieved from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) patient-focused Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on PPD. We scored the VA responses according to accuracy of speech recognition, presence of a verbal response, and clinically appropriate advice in accordance with ACOG FAQ, which were assessed by two board-certified physicians. Results Accurate recognition of the query ranged from 79% to 100%. Verbal response ranged from 36% to 79%. If no verbal response was given, queries were treated like a web search between 33% and 89% of the time. Clinically appropriate advice given by VA ranged from 14% to 29%. We compared the category proportions using the Fisher exact test. No single VA statistically outperformed other VAs in the three performance categories. Additional observations showed that two VAs (Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana) included advertisements in their responses. Conclusions While the best performing VA gave clinically appropriate advice to 29% of the PPD questions, all four VAs taken together achieved 64% clinically appropriate advice. All four VAs performed well in accurately recognizing a PPD query, but no VA achieved even a 30% threshold for providing clinically appropriate PPD information. Technology companies and clinical organizations should partner to improve guidance, screen patients for mental health disorders, and educate patients on potential treatment.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clinical Advice by Voice Assistants on Postpartum Depression: Cross-Sectional Investigation Using Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana

Yang¹,

Lee²,

Sezgın³

et al. 2021

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Leveraging technology for monitoring and overall strengthening of the infodemic response should be considered in LMIC contexts. 11 Establishing systematic monitoring, disease surveillance and evaluation system as well as promoting scientific research using robust methodologies and tools can inform existing infodemic or design responsive interventions and generate evidence for policymaking. Promotion of collective learning through the formation of communities of practice for regular sharing of experiences, knowledge and best practices is called for.…”

Section: A Multipronged Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combating the COVID-19 infodemic: a three-level approach for low and middle-income countries

et al. 2021

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“…Every technological device that could be used is a valuable asset in preventing the contamination with the virus. This is why VAs could be used with healthcare communication, like asking standard exam questions, triaging, screening, receiving questions for providers, and offering basic medication guidelines [ 53 ]. Such implementations would decrease dependency on providers for routine tasks, but also reduce the impact of delayed care.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ref. [ 53 ] concluded that different VAs showed disconnection with public health authorities, while the information presented by the VAs is many times not up-to-date and not reliable. This is why there is a need to improve the features of VAs, but also the coordination between the stakeholders in terms of requirements and necessities.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Practical Experience on the Amazon Alexa Integration in Smart Offices

Bogdan

Tatu

Crişan-Vida

et al. 2021

Sensors

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Smart offices are dynamically evolving spaces meant to enhance employees’ efficiency, but also to create a healthy and proactive working environment. In a competitive business world, the challenge of providing a balance between the efficiency and wellbeing of employees may be supported with new technologies. This paper presents the work undertaken to build the architecture needed to integrate voice assistants into smart offices in order to support employees in their daily activities, like ambient control, attendance system and reporting, but also interacting with project management services used for planning, issue tracking, and reporting. Our research tries to understand what are the most accepted tasks to be performed with the help of voice assistants in a smart office environment, by analyzing the system based on task completion and sentiment analysis. For the experimental setup, different test cases were developed in order to interact with the office environment formed by specific devices, as well as with the project management tool tasks. The obtained results demonstrated that the interaction with the voice assistant is reasonable, especially for easy and moderate utterances.

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Readiness for voice assistants to support healthcare delivery during a health crisis and pandemic

Cited by 107 publications

References 26 publications

Clinical Advice by Voice Assistants on Postpartum Depression: Cross-Sectional Investigation Using Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana

Clinical Advice by Voice Assistants on Postpartum Depression: Cross-Sectional Investigation Using Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana

Combating the COVID-19 infodemic: a three-level approach for low and middle-income countries

A Practical Experience on the Amazon Alexa Integration in Smart Offices

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