Skip to main content

Amazon NHS Association


Amazon NHS Association

An association for elderly people, blind people and other patients who cannot easily search for health advice on the internet to access the information through the AI-powered voice assistant Alexa. 

Recently, Matt Hancock announced a new collaboration between the NHS and Amazon, which paired expert medical advice by NHS with amazon’s market-leading Alexa device. People who need medical information can get advice directly from NHS which is more accurate, reliable and safe.

Privacy campaigners have expressed their concern for the data, they said that the data could be stored and used to sell targeted ads aimed at customers.
Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said: “Amazon’s Alexa records what people say, stores recordings in data centres we know nothing about and exploits our data for profit. This scheme will likely result in people being profiled and targeted by data brokers based on their deeply personal health concerns”. 

Amazon defended this by giving the statement: “Customer trust is of the utmost importance and Amazon takes privacy seriously. Customers are in control of their voice history. They can review and delete voice recordings in the Alexa App or by visiting amazon.co.uk/privacy. They can also opt-in to ‘delete what I just said’ or ‘delete what I said today’.”

Amazon said it will not build a health profile of customers and all information is treated with the highest confidentiality. It’s algorithm will use information from the NHS website to provide answers to questions such as: “Alexa, how do I treat a migraine?”; “Alexa, what are the symptoms of flu?”, and “Alexa, what are the symptoms of chickenpox?”

The Department of Health (DoH) said it would empower patients and hopefully reduce the pressure on the NHS by providing reliable information on common illnesses.
Voice search has been increasing rapidly and by 2020 half of all searches are expected to be made via voice-assisted technology.

Under the NHS long-term plan, which aims to improve the quality of patient care and health outcomes in an effort to relieve pressure on the health service, it has committed to making more services available digitally.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pegasus Spyware: Flying Through The Air

 Hundreds of millions of people can't imagine life without their smartphones. Almost every aspect of their daily lives, from the most mundane to the most intimate, is within easy reach and hearing distance of their smartphones. Only few people realize that their phones may be used as surveillance devices, with someone hundreds of miles away secretly extracting their messages, photographs, and location while also activating their microphone and recording them in real time. Such capabilities are present in Pegasus, a spyware produced by NSO Group, an Israeli maker of mass surveillance weapons. What is Pegasus? Pegasus is a hacking software – or spyware – that is developed, marketed and licensed to governments around the world by the Israeli company NSO Group. It has the capability to infect billions of phones using either iOS or Android operating systems. The spyware is named after Pegasus, the white winged horse from Greek mythology. It is named so because it "flies through the...
Post a Comment
Read more

8 TECH SUPPORT STORIES. A MUST READ!

MOVE THE MOUSE! I asked a user to move her mouse all the way to the right. They picked up the mouse physically and put it on the right side of her desk. RIGHT CLICK! I told the user to right click on the desktop to select properties. She replied that nothing was happening. I asked her again to do the same. She replied with the same answer. When I went to her desk, she had written the word CLICK on a paper on her desk. LAPTOP NOT WORKING! A user was once shouting at me that her laptop was not working even though she hit the keys and tried the touch pad. I run down to her, she shows her laptop still shouting that I wasn’t working properly and couldn’t do my job etc. I look at her laptop, switch it on, turn around and leave the room. OUTAGE PROBLEM! A user once asked if they could download “download the Internet” in case there was a power outage and they could still use it. COMPUTER WON’T TURN ON! Once, a user said that her computer won’t turn on. I asked her to check ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Facebook Smart Glasses Coming ‘Sooner Than Later’ Without AR

Facebook’s smart glasses will let users record the world around them, and take pictures. Facebook says its first pair of consumer “smart glasses” will be releasing next year as a branded Ray-Ban product , CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced during the opening keynote of its all-virtual Facebook Connect conference. It’s not clear what features the device will have, but Facebook has confirmed to  The Verge  that the device will not be classified as an AR device, and it will not have an integrated display of any kind. The company has talked for years about its plans to build AR devices that resemble a standard pair of glasses, and the company is now working with Ray-Ban maker Essilor Luxottica to design the frames of its first consumer smart glasses, confirming rumours last fall that the company had partnered with the Italian eyewear brand.     What are Facebook Ray-Ban Stories? What exactly do these do? Facebook’s first ‘smart’ glasses capitalise on the iconic Wayfarer desi...
Post a Comment
Read more