Amazon to end support for third-party Alexa skills to book doctors online

Amazon is ending support for third-party healthcare Alexa skills that allow users to ask the virtual assistant for booking a doctor’s appointment, accessing hospital post-discharge instructions, checking on the status of a prescription delivery and more.

The Alexa healthcare programme allowed patients to share Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-protected information with healthcare organisations through Alexa, reports Voicebot.ai.

The invite-only programme was first launched in 2019 for select developers.

“There was no advance warning, just the email today,” a developer that created an Alexa skill with personal data governed under the HIPAA guidelines was quoted as saying.