Alexa voice assistant skill for multiple myeloma patients - convenient access to expert-reviewed health information
ABSTRACT
Background:
Multiple myeloma (MM) patients have high information needs due to the complexity of the disease and variety of treatments. Digital voice assistants provide support in daily life and can be a convenient tool for even elderly patients to access health information. Voice assistants may therefore be useful in providing digital health service to meet MM patient information needs.
Objective:
We aim to report on the development and describe the content and functionality of the first Amazon Alexa voice assistant skill for MM patients in Germany with the goal of empowering and educating patients, and further share data on skill usage and first learnings.
Methods:
Patient information on MM disease, diagnostics and therapy was grouped into question-answer style, reviewed by experts and programmed into the skill. Additionally, a search function for patient support groups in the perimeter of 200 km around the user and a myeloma quiz functionality with multiple-choice questions was integrated into the skill.
Results:
The Alexa skill “Multiple Myeloma” was launched in September 2019, is available free of charge at the German Amazon Alexa skill store (https://www.amazon.de/Takeda-Pharma-Vertrieb-GmbH-Co/dp/B07T47DFSC), and can be used with devices featuring Amazon voice assistant Alexa. The skill answers FAQs and explains medical terms around MM disease, diagnostics and therapy, can find patient support groups near the user and offers an MM quiz as an educational game. Since the launch in 09/2019 up to 07/2021, 141 users have installed the skill and between 07/2020 and 07/2021, 189 skill sessions with 797 utterances were analyzed. The most popular inquiries were patient support group searches near the user, followed by information on MM disease and the quiz.
Conclusions:
The Alexa skill “Multiple Myeloma” offers patient-friendly and expert-reviewed answers and explanations of medical terms around MM disease, diagnostics and therapy, as well as connections to patient support groups and a quiz functionality. In the future, the skill can be extended with content and new functionalities like medication adherence support.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.