Amazon has patented a technology by which a speech analysis system can recognize a sick person. In addition to the cold, which is proposed to determine by coughing and hoarseness, the system will also be able to recognize the user’s mood. It is assumed that the company will use this technology in its voice assistant Alexa.
Amazon introduced Alexa Voice Assistant in 2014. In addition to the device Amazon Echo, for which the assistant was originally developed, the company uses it in a variety of devices, from microwaves to cars. The company’s speech analysis technology is constantly being refined: for example, a year ago the voice assistant learned how to give personalized answers to different users, and recently an amateur developer taught Alexa how to respond to sign requests.
Now the company has patented the diagnosis of diseases by the user’s voice. The patent, which was approved on October 9, indicated that speech recognition technology for such diagnostics will be used in Amazon devices (for example, in the same Echo column). Of course, such a diagnosis will not replace the medical one: analyzing the temporal and spatial parameters of speech, as well as the change in voice due to cough and sore throat, Alexa can, for example, check with the user if he is not sick and offer to order medicines for him. With regard to the analysis of emotions, in this case, the system will have access not only to voice responses, but also to the user’s search history: the analysis will be supplemented with information on recent actions on the network. With this, the system will be able to determine, for example, that a person is sad or bored, and ask how he is doing and what he would like to do; also a voice assistant can suggest watching a movie. In the future, mood analysis can also be used to diagnose mental disorders, but the patent does not elaborate on this in detail.
Sources:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/amazon-patents-alexa-tech-to-tell-if-youre-sick-depressed-and-sell-you-meds/
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=10,096,319&OS=10,096,319&RS=10,096,319
Dear Vladislav,
Thank you for your blog, it was certainly an interesting read. I am curious how far Alexa will be developed in the coming years. It sure has a lot of potential, the opportunities seem limitless. Something which is not totally clear to me, is what your thoughts are on the subject of Alexa replacing a doctor? Do you think Alexa would be able to order automatically medicines for you? Is this only restricted to the field of coughs? Or do you think Alexa will in the near future able to discover some more serieus diseases?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this,
Sincerely,
Koen Walsteijn
I liked the article, voice assistant to be more personalised, and speech analysis making huge advancement in medial field assisting patients and their loved ones.
Even today, there are a few diseases that have no cure, such as Motor Neuron Disease (MND)/ALS. It slowly robs patients of their ability to speak and move. Inspired by patient of MND/ALS, Samsung is making efforts to customize Bixby technology (voice assistant) to preserve patient voice for loved ones.
If such improvements in voice assistant are combined across the platform of Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Samsung Bixby, such devices/technology are set to become even more ubiquitous in our homes and other environments over the next few years .
Check Samsung Bixby in action – with speech recognition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OhJ00an0mI
https://www.samsung.com/in/microsite/voice-forever/