Medical and health care instructions aren’t for sissies. Pre- and post-surgery instructions, physical therapy rehab exercise guidelines, and medication side effects and interaction warnings can be confusing. People with multiple chronic conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, for example, can easily reach a state of overwhelm from the mounds of care management information.
Los Angles-based Frontive launched Frontive Health, a smart personal health program that interacts with patients via Amazon’s Echo Alexa digital voice assistant. Frontive uses artificial intelligence to organize fragmented bits of patient health and care information. The program combines personal information, preferences, and interactions with the mass of medical and care data to help patients and their caregivers follow prescribed regimens.
Frontive recently completed a successful pilot program with Lowell General Hospital. Fifteen Lowell knee surgery patients used Frontive starting two weeks before their surgery and for two months after their hospital discharge. Alexa provided the patients with daily information on goals, expectations, actions, and things to avoid. Alexa also answered questions about prescribed medications. According to the company, the patients and their physicians were all pleased with the help the app provided. A second pilot is underway at Lowell that adds an integrated mobile app.
Frontive established four parameters for the personal care management platform’s success. The platform must be easy to use, personal, automatic, and secure. Frontive stores all protected health data in a private, HIPAA-compliant cloud. Patients access the information via Alexa with a personally-managed PIN. Frontive Health links directly to patient electronic medical records to keep the information patient-specific, accurate, and current.
We’ve written about other Alexa applications, including answering health questions in the U.K., wellness detection, and supporting senior independent living. Amazon’s Alexa development group encourages and supports new voice-engagement applications with tools and development support staff. It will be interesting to see the extent to which an Alexa skill that can help patients navigate their electronic health records and make sense of their personal loads of health care and medical management information.
