Last April, I published a blog about potentially using cloud-based voice services, such as Amazon Echo (Alexa) or Google Home, to serve as artificial intelligence (AI) when seeking a healthcare diagnosis based on symptoms we experience. By merely sharing our medical symptoms with a smart-voice service, we could receive a diagnosis that is based on the latest peer-reviewed medical literature available. As pointed out in the blog, one cautionary note about using such a tool was the ‘legal liability hurdles,’ such as being HIPAA-compliant (a U.S. health privacy law) – making sure that our private-patient information is being securely transmitted. This particular hurdle appears to have been cleared. On April 4, the publication STAT reported that Amazon unveiled HIPAA-compliant software allowing pre-selected healthcare companies to build Alexa voice-program tools giving patients access Read More >