Smart speakers have now entered the healthcare

Smart speakers that were kept in the living room can now be programmed to work for the physicians in hospital operating rooms as revealed by a research which was presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s 2019 Annual Scientific Meeting.

Amazon Echo and Google Home will now provide an interface that permits interventional radiology (IR) physicians to question and gather information that is required for patient treatments.

"During treatment, IRs rely on nuanced medical information delivered in a timely manner. When you're in the middle of a procedure, you need to remain sterile, so you lose the ability to use a computer," said Kevin Seals, MD, a fellow in interventional radiology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and lead author of the study. "This smart speaker technology helps us to quickly and intelligently make decisions relevant to a patient's specific needs."

The UCSF researchers created a device-sizing application for the Google Home smart speaker. The device will provide information to those questions that are asked by a human voice. For instance, if an IR needs any assistance regarding the size of the stealth to use to implant a stent in a patient’s blood vessel, the speaker will swiftly give a reply from which the physician can actually make a decision.