Last night on Saturday Night Live, a spoof advertisement for an “Alexa Silver” poked gentle fun at how an Alexa speaker could be used with the elderly to do things like listen to their long, rambling stories (and respond with “uh-huh”), as well as answer questions even when addressed as “Alaina,” “Allegra,” “Aretha,” or other names.
But using an Alexa device with senior citizens is actually a good idea — as a hack at today’s TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017 hackathon displayed.
The hack’s creator, Brett Krutiansky, a computer science student at Northeastern in Boston, says he came up with the idea for “Elderly Alexa” because both of his grandparents need additional care. His grandfather suffers from dementia and his grandmother has trouble seeing, and both have vertigo.
His mother is continually worried and stressed about her parents’ well-being — sometimes frantically calling neighbors when she can’t reach them at home. Krutiansky says he’s offering his hack as a Mother’s Day gift to help ease her mind.
The voice app he built — or “Alexa Skill,” in Amazon’s lingo — is enabled on an Echo speaker, offering an interface between families and their loved ones who need extra care.
Through “Elderly Alexa,” the elderly can ask Alexa what medicine they need to take and what they’ve already taken by saying “Alexa, medicine.” This also triggers an AWS Lambda event that emails their family members tracking their care.
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