LA's Cedars-Sinai adds Alexa devices to 100 hospital rooms

Cedars-Sinai is making some of its hospital rooms a little more like home for patients with the help of Amazon Alexa. The Los Angeles hospital on Monday said it's piloting a system called Avia, which it calls "the world's first patient-centered voice assistant platform for hospitals." As part of the pilot, Cedars-Sinai has equipped more than 100 rooms with Amazon Echo smart speakers so patients can use Alexa to control the TV or summon a nurse with just the sound of their voice. Patients in these "smart hospital rooms" can say things like "Alexa, change the channel to ESPN" when they want to watch sports on TV or "Alexa, tell my nurse I need to use the restroom" when they need assistance getting out of bed. Healthcare requests are sent to the appropriate person's mobile phone--whether that be a caregiver, nurse, clinical partner, manager, or administrator.