Voice Assistants in Healthcare: The Industry Finding Its Digital Voice

The landscape of today’s healthcare sector is being carved by the increase in access to emergent technologies within the space–with technological advancements meaning contemporary healthcare is almost unrecognizable compared to the industry which preceded it. 

As new potentials within the industry are explored, the shift from such technologies belonging to a ‘niche market’ to a freely accessible one has meant some technologies, like digital voice assistants, are becoming much more mainstream. The potential for voice assistants in the healthcare industry can be seen by simply observing consumer technology – think Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant – where contextual advice and suggestions are freely given following a process of speech recognition. Imagine the possibilities of this within the healthcare space? From providing a connection between provider and patient to offering virtual diagnostics and treatments, the opportunities certainly expand much farther than suggestions from popular sleeping and meditation apps that have already capitalized on the potential.

What does voice tech look like in healthcare?

Already, the health tech industry is aiding a massive growth in virtual nursing assistants around the globe. Aside from helping manage the burden on the already time-restricted medical staff, the proliferation of AI-based health voice assistants – like virtual nurses – has helped reduce hospital and surgery visits that may otherwise be unnecessary. On the other hand, a significant patient-centric benefit is access to round-the-clock support for medical conditions. With providers receiving access to even more accurate analytical data, it’s likely as more AI solutions develop in the healthcare sector, there will be even greater benefits discovered for both patient and provider. As mentioned earlier, several apps have already capitalized on the potential for AI solutions in healthcare – particularly within the sleep monitoring and meditation space – but there is a growing number of apps using voice-enabled software to monitor symptoms and observe some chronic diseases, like asthma, heart disease and diabetes. It’s likely as continued advances in AI technologies in healthcare take place, the monitoring of chronic disease, like those mentioned above, will be digitized onto reliable virtual platforms – with voice assistant technology at their core.

Building applications for digital voice

Ultimately, the goal of creating technologies that harness voice technology should be focused on improving the efficiency and decision of clinical diagnoses – rather than being viewed as a threat to traditional methods of collecting data. This, in short, means the collection of accurate data is a critical aspect when building AI healthcare technologies. If providers can ensure the data their applications collect is accurate, relevant and unbiased – the more valuable the insights their medtech applications will provide. Then, as these platforms and technologies develop, a hopeful benefit will be a faster, less stressful experience for each patient.

Bringing it all together

While the regulation of the healthcare industry means any new healthcare technology will face some friction–if companies can adopt agile processes and conduct research before and during testing phases, the likelihood of the application delivering appropriate outcomes increases significantly. In doing so, voice assistant technology will continue developing and transforming the patient-provider journey and offer incredibly competitive advantages to companies like Star, operating within the healthcare sector.