The use of voice-assisted technology to enhance self-care

In July 2019, the Government announced that the NHS was to collaborate with the US global technology company Amazon to provide reliable health information from the NHS website through Amazon's voice-assisted technology, Alexa (Department of Health and Social Care, 2019a). ‘Smart speakers’ with Alexa respond to voice commands and give appropriate answers. The female voice of the Alexa digital assistant is now commonplace in many homes and other companies such as Google and Apple offer similar voice-assisted technology platforms. Now, for the first time, voice-assisted technology is to be harnessed to NHS healthcare advice provision.

The importance of innovation in health care cannot be overestimated and, since the dawn of communication technology and the invention of the telephone, the healthcare industry has endeavoured to harness its potential. The first recorded use of the telephone for the purposes of a healthcare consultation occurred in 1879, only 3 years after its invention (Glasper and Wilkins, 1998).