Amazon is ending support for a program that allowed patients to share HIPAA-protected health information with healthcare organizations through Alexa. The news was first reported by Voicebot.ai.
The invite-only program, which first launched in 2019, allowed select developers to create and launch HIPAA-compliant healthcare skills for Alexa (skills are the third-party voice apps that run on Alexa devices). The skills released as part of the program allowed consumers to ask the virtual assistant for help with things like booking an appointment, accessing hospital post-discharge instructions, checking on the status of a prescription delivery and more.
Amazon launched the program with six healthcare organizations, including Boston Children’s Hospital, Livongo, Swedish Health Connect, Cigna Health Today, Atrium Health and Express Scripts. As of last week, only three of these organizations had applications active on the Alexa Skills store, according to Voicebot.ai.
“We regularly review our experiences to ensure we are investing in services that will