Experiences with Voice-Controlled Intelligent Personal Assistants

Our large quaternary-care medical center partnered with a technology start-up company to implement an innovative project using voice-controlled intelligent personal assistants (VIPAs) to improve patient communication workflow, medica-tion education and ultimately hospital efficiency. Specifically, the team utilized 2nd generation Amazon Echo dots for the VIPAs. Nursing leaders and frontline staff developed a workflow map of patient requests, identifying tasks for specific roles with timed escalation. From December 2019 to September 2021, 746 VIPA devices documented hundreds of thousands of interactions. Most patient requests were for music and other entertainment (84%), followed by requests to control the televi-sion (9%), which the VIPA handled through Aiva's integration with Sonifi, Cedars-Sinai's patient experience platform. Nursing-related requests accounted for 3%. The VIPAs streamlined workflow by directly addressing entertainment and non-medical-related requests, allowing nurses to focus on health care-related issues and thus practice at the top of their scope.