Aiva Health wades into the healthcare industry with the aim of applying Google Assistant to make life easier.
Voice assistant is proving to be useful for a growing number of consumers, including senior citizens, and another startup Aiva Health is wading into the healthcare industry with the aim of applying Google Assistant to make life easier.
The company has received backing from the Google Assistant Investment Program and will use the capital to accelerate development and deployment of Google Assistant for better care.
For seniors, voice assistants don’t just engage them in their residences; they also connect them with friends, family and neighbors through hands-free phone and video calls, which helps to alleviate loneliness. In addition, the assistants remind seniors about events, outings and activities, making life more fun and social.
Aiva uses not only Google Home, but also Amazon Echo and other smart speakers to “engage and empower” patients and seniors, the company says, adding that they may also connect more closely with caregivers.
The Google Assistant system will be built on enterprise applications, so that caregivers can use a mobile app to manage help requests. There is also a dashboard for performance reporting and a backend for controlling the voice assistants’ settings and interaction with other smart TVs, lights, thermostats, etc.
Smart technologies are helping people to stay on top of their health. Increasingly popular health app is one example. A new research from Parks Associates shows that more than one-fourth of U.S. households use an app to track or manage their health or wellness, with adoption highest among consumers ages 18-34.
"The number of consumers using health apps has increased since early 2017, and 40% of current app users have two or more health-related apps they use," said Jennifer Kent, director of Research Quality & Product Development at Parks Associates.
Fitbit Introduces Smart Health Solution
Last week global wearable brand Fitbit introduced the Fitbig Plus App, which lets users check health metrics like blood glucose and blood pressure, and stick with their medication intake while tracking critical health data. The app allows users to see critical health data conveniently in one place, to better understand trends over time.
Fitbit and health company Humana have teamed up to help customers adopt healthy behaviors to prevent and manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension or depression; and complex conditions like chronic pulmonary obstructive disease or congestive heart failure.
The recently launched Fitbit Care is a solution that combines coaching and healthcare. Coaches work with participants to create personalized care plans and can communicate via in-app meetings. Users can work on specific health goals, such as smoking cessation and weight loss.
With the Fitbit Care platform, users can continuously track activity, sleep, heart rate, and other metrics like female health tracking to help people better understand their overall health. With a user’s consent, real-time, objective health data is sent to care teams, who can then have a comprehensive picture of an individual’s health for personalized recommendations and care.
Utilizing smart technologies, Fitbit gets to “engage and motivate members,” while creating frequent, convenient touch-points “that support members beyond the walls of a doctor’s office,” said Jeff Reid, Humana’s senior vice president of Wellness Solutions.