'Alexa, find me a doctor': Amazon launches privacy-compliant version of its digital assistant

Amazon's digital assistant could soon do more than just turn on your lights or tell you the weather. The e-commerce giant has signaled a major leap into healthcare for Alexa, by rolling out an invite-only program for developers to create their own skills around health and medicine. It would allow users to ask Alexa to book a doctor's appointment, find an urgent care center and check for updates on prescription refills. Amazon's digital assistant could soon do more than just turn on your lights or tell you the weather. Amazon, which launched the program on Thursday, said the skills are all compliant with the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which ensures that personal health care information is protected. The firm told Wired that it has added extra security levels to how it treats the data collected through these skills, beyond the encryption, access controls and secure cloud storage it deploys for other skill data.