Amazon Alexa now offers medical advice from WebMD

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Connect the Amazon Echo Dot to your existing speaker system, and you bingo! -- your speakers just got smarts.
Dr. Alexa will see you now.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Amazon Alexa’s incredible skill-set continues to expand, with medical advice the latest addition to the list.

Thanks to a partnership between Amazon and WebMD, Alexa speakers can now answer basic health-related queries that could save you a trip to the doctor’s office.

Virtual assistants are becoming more intelligent all the time, but few match Amazon Alexa, which now exceeds 10,000 different skills. Its latest makes an Alexa speaker an even more useful addition to your home — especially if you might be a hypochondriac.

With WebMD integration, you can now ask Alexa for medical advice. It’s capable of recommending treatments for common illnesses and ailments, providing definitions of different diseases, and informing you about the side-effects of certain drugs.

You can say things like “Alexa, ask WebMD how to treat a cold,” or, “Alexa, ask WebMD what diabetes is.” Like the WebMD website, however, Alexa integration is designed to provide only supplementary information, and is not a substitute for a real doctor.

WebMD support for Alexa is “going to be really helpful in situations where you want to access something hands-free,” explained WebMD vice president of mobile products, Ben Greenberg, to The Verge.

“For example, a mom with her baby. The baby’s got a rash and is on amoxicillin, and there’s poop all over the place and it’s scary. The mom can find out that diarrhea is a side effect of amoxicillin, without having to navigate through a visual interface.”

There is a worry that medical advice from a virtual assistant, particularly one that uses audio only, could be dangerous. Without the ability to easily view information from multiple sources, and recommendations for just one cure or drug, users aren’t getting all the data they should.

That’s why WebMD on Alexa is good for basic queries only. It’s also a “work-in-progress” that won’t work perfectly every time, so bear that in mind before you try it out. And as always, consult your doctor or pharmacist before taking any kind of medication.

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