Amazon’s voice-controlled personal assistant, called Alexa, is a hypochondriac’s dream
Feeling too sick to even type your symptoms into a search engine for an instant diagnosis? Help at is at hand, in the form of technology giant Amazon’s voice-controlled personal assistant, called Alexa.
Just tell Alexa what is ailing you and she’ll dive into medical website WebMD.com on your behalf and come back with some “physician-reviewed health information” which may prove useful – then again, it may well not, but at least you didn’t have to get out of bed and fire-up your laptop.
A hypochondriac’s dream, Alexa can be asked about a range medical conditions, medications, tests and treatments and she will respond with WebMD-sourced answers in “easy to understand” language. Alexa fans can also ask for the information to be sent in a text message, along with a url containing more information.
According to Amazon, the goal of integrating Alexa with WebMD is to “bypass a potentially misdirected search for health information” by taking the user directly to WebMD’s content library.
