Millions talk to Amazon’s voice assistant every day with mostly mundane commands, like “play music” or “set timer 11 minutes for pasta”. At Houston Methodist hospital the very same technology instead hears: “Start surgery.”
Over the past year, a tie-up between the network of eight hospitals and its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services has led to voice activation being built into an experimental operating theatre, powered by much of the same technology as found in the Alexa assistant. The commands start running through vital steps in the operation, allowing the surgeon to verbally confirm when he or she has taken certain actions, such as administering anaesthesia.
“It’s using my voice to complete those activities, so there’s never a step that’s missed,” says Dr Nicholas Desai, a foot and ankle surgeon and chief medical information officer at Houston Methodist. “Once it’s completed, [the assistant] writes it back to the electronic medical record as a completed activity, so if there’s ever an issue, or something doesn’t get done, there’s going to be a notification.”