Amazon Alexa and Aiva Health empower patients at the Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital

Enabling patients to live their best possible life

When Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital (part of Jefferson Health) was renovating its facility in Philadelphia to accommodate single patient rooms, it saw an opportunity to transform the patient experience. The Center City Philadelphia rehabilitation hospital serves patients with spinal cord injuries, brain injuries, stroke, amputations, orthopedic injuries, and other debilitating conditions. In all such conditions, patients seek what the rest of us take for granted – to live their everyday lives as independently as possible. And that is  the overarching mission – enable its patients to return to their best possible way of life. The renovation provided Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation a chance to further its mission by improving in-room patient experience. For example, many rehab patients struggle to manually control lights, thermostats and blinds, and  would benefit from smart home style control of those devices in the hospital.

Enter Alexa and Aiva Health.

Possibilities of using Alexa to serve patients

Director of Strategic Initiatives, Jeffrey Brown, reached out to Aiva Health, a virtual assistance platform for healthcare and long-term care, to deploy Alexa-enabled smart speakers in patient rooms. Aiva, which counts Amazon’s Alexa Fund among its investors, was one of the earliest Alexa partners to recognize the potential of bringing Alexa-enabled devices from homes to Enterprises. More than a billion Alexa-enabled devices have been sold to date, which is testament to the ubiquity of these devices and consumer familiarity with Alexa.

“That meeting with Aiva Health made us realize that the home-based voice assistant, Alexa, can be deployed in a scalable manner in a healthcare setting to improve the patient experience. We truly consider Aiva to be part of our team as it relates to this implementation.” – Jeffrey Brown, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital

Seamless and speedy onboarding

Aiva worked with stakeholders within the hospital, such as facilities (for building automation), concierge services (for patient experience), information technology (for integrations), and nursing (for hands-on device and patient handling) to ensure that their input was considered and that the Alexa solution benefited patients, care teams, and the hospital. The hospital’s leadership recognized the value of such a solution and quickly approved the deployment of Amazon Echo Dot smart speakers in all 83 rooms at the facility. It took three months from approval to deployment, and then just three more days to activate the devices, including smart room controls.   

Offering a differentiated experience for patients

Extending the use of Alexa from home to the hospital seemed natural as patients intuitively started using their voice to pursue activities such as play relaxing music, turn off lights, and lower the blinds. While staff members provide handouts to patients on how to use these devices, Jeff says the popularity of such devices in households ensures that patients don’t need a lot of handholding. During patient admission, the care team asks Alexa to introduce herself and she offers a quick overview of the device’s capabilities, which in most cases is sufficient for patients to get comfortable. Since launch, patients have appreciated what Alexa has to offer. Jeff has heard from current and prospective patients that Alexa is one of the reasons for them to pick Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation to undergo treatment.

“Patients tell us all the time that it feels nice for them to interact with Alexa in their rooms. It bestows a sense of normalcy and familiarity that they are able to interact with a device through the most natural medium – ‘voice’.” – Jeffrey Brown

Enabling patients to regain control

On an average day, patients using Alexa utter more than 10 commands with the most popular being for smart room control (52%) and entertainment (12%). Therapists at Magee vouch for how Alexa fosters patient independence, reduces their anxiety, and improves their morale.  

“It’s given me a sense of independence. There are a lot of things Alexa can do for me so that I don’t need to necessarily have to call staff all the time. It’s also good practice for me when I go home and I got one of my own devices so that I can be more independent.” – Shyneika Taylor, Patient, Magee Rehabilitation Hospital

Protecting patient privacy

Alexa’s privacy standards are not only extended to the hospital setting, but also enhanced, to protect patient information. Unlike at home, where an Alexa-enabled device is linked to a person’s Amazon account for personal use, the device in each patient room is mapped to the hospital room and not to the patient. The facilities determine which capabilities, smart home integrations, and Alexa skills to enable for patients. Patients don’t need to share any personal information with the device in their rooms, and they can even choose to disable the device if they don’t wish to interact with it. Moreover, voice commands are streamed in an encrypted manner to the cloud only when the wake word ‘Alexa’ is invoked. Voice recordings are never stored, and no human ever reviews conversations between patients and Alexa.

“Patient privacy is extremely important to us. We are happy that we are able to serve our patients in a secure manner due to Alexa’s multiple layers of privacy protections.” – Jeffrey Brown

Reducing nurse burden

These devices have enabled patients to handle many basic tasks on their own, thus freeing up nurses to focus on higher-value patient care, cater to other areas of care beyond their remit, and practice at the top of their license. It also reduces the number of visits to patient rooms, which quickly adds up considering Magee’s scale. Jeff conservatively estimates that these devices save three minutes of a nurse’s time whenever patients are able to use Alexa to perform a task for which they used to rely on nurses.

“Alexa frees up so much time with little things where before I had to go into a room and the patient wanted the lights out but now the patient can do it independently. It’s phenomenal, I love it.”
– Erin Strandberg, Registered Nurse, Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital

Expansion ahead

Jeff and his team are working with Aiva to enable the following capabilities to further improve patient experience, reduce care team burden, and improve hospital processes: 1) Calling an interpreter: Connect patients with an interpretation service through the Alexa-enabled device (currently nurses have to get patients an interpretation tablet or cart); 2) Therapy: Enable patients to play therapy-based games on their devices; 3) In-context and proactive services: For example, if patients try to go to the bathroom at night and trigger an exit sensor in the bed, the sensor could alert Alexa so that she could tell them to stay in their bed until a nurse arrives, avoiding falls; 4) Smart Room Expansion: Controlling TV power, volume, and channels; 5) Workflow automation: Once a patient is discharged and the room is cleaned, the hospital staff can tell Alexa, which will let the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system know the room is ready for the next patient, increasing throughput. Apart from expanding the capabilities of these devices, Jeff and his team are evangelizing this solution to the wider Jefferson Health enterprise to explore deployment in other care areas such as the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and outpatient exam rooms.

“The Care Team wants to keep this going and add more features to help with patient care. Going forward, we envision such voice activated Alexa enabled interactive patient rooms as the new normal.”
– Jeffrey Brown

Learn more about Alexa Smart Properties for Healthcare by visiting this webpage, contact the Alexa Smart Properties team, or reach out to Aiva to learn more about offering voice-enabled experiences in your healthcare facilities.