Voice tech in Healthcare for Disabled Patients

Technology is transforming industries across the globe, and these developments are taking place at such a rate that it is impossible for humans to adapt to them, and healthcare is no exception. We have witnessed a radical transformation in the healthcare journey, and it all comes down to something that we use daily, something that we all have with us right now, something that we are born with i.e. our voices. We no longer have to adapt to the way a computer works. In fact, the computers are adapting to us and now we are seeing the adoption of voice assistants’ smart speakers like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri and many more. 

Voice coupled with the power of Machine Learning & Natural Language Processing has become so compelling nowadays that it becomes an interesting area of research and we are seeing massive adoption of this technology. In fact, devices like this are being adopted at a rate faster than any consumer technology in history. Such technologies can change the way things have been accomplished for quite a long time in the healthcare industry including how patients participate in out-of-patient care, and how doctors know and communicate with clinical gadgets. 

In the presence of a voice-enabled device, the patient can ask questions to the voice assistants regarding their heart conditions, sending a report to the caretaker, scheduling an appointment and symptom checker in the home healthcare system (Dojchinovski, Ilievski, & Gusev, 2019).

What is Voice Tech in Healthcare all about? 

Considering the utilization of sophisticated algorithms, chatbots with precision in order to achieve the desired results have shown the potential to engage voice assistants in a delicate field of research. With these devices, we are going to have artificial intelligent health care teams living in our homes. Imagine a voice assistant being able to help a doctor make a diagnosis, or your Alexa having the option to check in with you at home following recent hospital discharge to give you medical advice (T'19, 2019). In fact, the number of new startups and organizations in the healthcare Voice User Interface space is growing substantially.

Disabled Patients

Voice Controlled Intelligent Personal partners fueled by AI voice-tech are not really planned in view of availability. Be that as it may, these insightful gadgets do discover clients with visual hindrance and other physical inabilities utilizing them. The significance of speech technology to individuals with inabilities can’t be underestimated.

Recently, (Pradhan, Mehta, & Findlater, 2018) have demonstrated in their study that the “Amazon Echo Network” has already been embraced by a huge population with disabilities such as speech impairment, visual impairment, cognitive impairment, hearing loss, mobility impairment and many more as a practical solution to several everyday challenges. Furthermore, it has been noted that such devices can save precious time for people who are visually impaired by having tasks done, helping people with speech impairments by forcing them to talk slowly, clearly, and loudly. In addition, those with dyslexia can use Alexa software to read book recordings and ask questions, and those with memory problems can use it to set reminders.

Recent Developments in this area:

Google's Project Euphonia: The biggest focus of Euphonia (Shor & Emanuel, 2019) will be collecting more voice data from people with impaired speech. It is intended to resolve the problem of AI bias created by insufficient training data.

Furthermore, the company is working on new interactive AI systems that identify behaviours like gestures and facial expressions. This would mean that individuals with extreme handicaps who can't talk at all could likewise utilize innovation like savvy home speakers and lights.

 Thomas Chappell brings unique insight to a Prudential team (Miller, 2019) developing tools to help people with low vision or hearing loss. Examples include Ava, a real-time voice-to-text application allowing someone to know what’s being said while replying through a “voice” reading a typewritten response. Additionally, an app called Aira helps people with low vision by connecting them to representatives who describe surroundings based on what they see through a smartphone’s camera.

References

Dojchinovski, D., Ilievski, A., & Gusev, M. (2019). Interactive home healthcare system with integrated voice assistant. IEEE, 284-288.

Miller, T. (2019). This silent developer speaks volumes, giving others a voice. Prudential Newsroom.

Pradhan, A., Mehta, K., & Findlater, L. (2018). Accessibility Came by Accident”: Use of Voice-Controlled Intelligent Personal Assistants by People with Disabilities. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18).

Shor, J., & Emanuel, D. (2019). Project Euphonia’s Personalized Speech Recognition for Non-Standard Speech. Google AI.

T'19, J. R. (2019). VOICE TECHNOLOGY IN HEALTHCARE. Center for Digital Strategies.