San Francisco: Amazon Ending support for third-party Health care Alexa Skills that allow users to book doctor’s appointments, access post-hospital discharge instructions, check prescription delivery status and ask the virtual assistant for more.
This Alexa Healthcare Program The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) allowed patients to share protected information with healthcare organizations through Alexa, reports Voicebot.ai.
An invite-only program was first launched in 2019 for select developers.
“There was no advance warning, just an email today,” said the developer, who created the Alexa skill with personal data handled under HIPAA guidelines.
According to the company, it regularly “reviews experiences to ensure we are investing in services that delight customers”.
“We continue to invest heavily in developing healthcare experiences with first and third-party developers, including Alexa Smart Properties for healthcare,” Amazon said.
Amazon has always been the only company to offer a HIPAA-compliant option for third-party developers.
The company is ending several Alexa initiatives as part of a larger cost-cutting exercise. The massive job cuts have affected several of the company’s divisions, particularly the Alexa virtual assistant business.
Next week, there will be no general-purpose voice assistant that independent developers can use to create voice experiences if HIPAA-eligible data can be collected, the report noted.
