Artificial intelligence developer contest puts Alexa to the test

Amazon Web Services and Merck announced a developer competition on Monday to that plans to harness artificial intelligence for diabetics. Dubbed the Alexa Diabetes Challenge, and powered by Luminary Labs, the contest aims to incent upstarts and individual developers to create apps that harness Amazon's Alexa voice-enabled technologies particularly for patients recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Early adopters such as Penn Medicine and Commonwealth Care Alliance are already running proofs-of-concept or pilot programs with Amazon Alexa being the centerpiece of improving patient experience. What's more, a new Healthcare IT News and HIMSS Analytics HIT Market Indicator report found that half of hospitals intend to adopt some fashion of AI in five years and more than a third plan to do so within two years. The Amazon and Merck contest enables innovators to use not only Alexa but also Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure.