Amazon's Alexa Can Now Remind Users To Take Their Daily Medication

If you are one of the absent-minded folks who forget when to take their medication, Amazon Alexa has a solution for you. It now can remind you to take the pills.

Other than a daily reminder, participants of this project can also send a request for prescription refills with the voice assistant.

For now, the feature is only available for customers of Giant Eagle, and they can activate it by turning on the Giant Eagle Pharmacy skill. After that, users can ask for information like which medication they should take at a particular time of the day. This feature is hoped to simplify the medication managing process by sparing users of the need to continually think about which medication to take and when.

According to Jim Tsipakis, the Vice President of Pharmacy of Giant Eagle, the company always want to make their service as accessible as possible for their customers. This partnership with Amazon enables them to leverage technology to meet that goal.

When asked about the possibility of this feature being rolled out to other pharmacies, Amazon said that it had learned from this launch and would expand the service to other partners in 2020.

As each person’s health information is of extreme privacy and sensitivity, Amazon offers multiple layers of verification. In the setup process, patients will be asked to type in a passcode. After that, after the virtual assistant recognizes your voice, it will ask you to repeat the passcode. According to Amazon, the reminders for medication can be redacted with the Alexa app.

Other healthcare skills offered by Amazon are health tips that are fed to users on a daily basis, blood sugar checking, and urgent care appointment scheduling.