Monitoring Your Glucose is Now Possible With a New Alexa Skill

on October 5, 2018 at 3:05 pm

Ambrosia Systems launched a new Alexa skill yesterday called Follow BluCon. The skill allows diabetics patients to access their glucose level readings by simply asking Alexa “Get last glucose reading of [First Name].”

On The Go Monitoring

Follow BluCon is a new feature of Ambrosia’s Abbot FreeStyle Libre and Pro Sensor systems for Continuous Glucose Monitoring (GCM). The skill is especially helpful for caregivers of diabetes patients as it gives them the ability to check on their loved ones’ glucose levels without bothering them or having to sign in to a mobile app. Piyush Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of Ambrosia Systems says,

We’re always looking for new ways to make it easy for Caregivers to keep track of the glucose levels of their loved ones. With the new Alexa skill, we’re thrilled to offer added convenience to our users.

The voice app is relatively simple as it only provides the glucose levels of the user’s followers but it speaks volumes about the potential for healthcare voice apps. Amazon certainly sees the potential. Earlier this year, it was announced Amazon Alexa launched a health and wellness team to create healthcare solutions targeting services to new mothers and people with diabetes first. The team is also reportedly working on dealing with specific challenges related to HIPAA compliance for the protection of patient data.

Focus on Healthcare

Even though Amazon has not been speaking publicly about their health and wellness group, they have been working directly on diabetes management for some time. Amazon worked with drugmaker Merck in the summer of 2017 in order to offer a prize to developers building Alexa skills related to diabetes management, also known as the Alexa Diabetes Challenge. GlobalData provides insight into Alexa’s focus on healthcare commenting,

With the right compliance and licenses in place Amazon could let customers share their medical records with Alexa-powered devices, which could then allow them to communicate with a medical professional from home, and share their sensitive medical records with qualified third parties.

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