Smart diagnosis is now available on your Echo smart speaker
You can now ask Alexa about common health complaints like rashes, fever, headaches, runny noses and stomach pains.
Amazon’s digital assistant will quiz you about these symptoms and their severity, and suggest possible causes using the Amazon Care platform.
On an Echo smart display you’ll see a severity chart, rating symptoms from 0 to 10, mirroring what you may be asked by a general practitioner.
While this sounds like a next-generation Wed M.D., a potential way to rile yourself up into unnecessary worry, Amazon does say the advice is stewarded by “clinical care guidelines”.
These should hopefully avoid you disappearing down unhelpful rabbit holes.
However, this information is intended for “educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional medical advice,” says Amazon.
The feature was inspired by Amazon’s Covid checker, introduced in March 2020. It will be most useful when paired with Teladoc.
Teladoc lets Alexa users (in the US) book remote appointments with a medical professional, and stage a “virtual visit” using an Echo smart speaker.
Usability upgrades for Fire TV and Echo
Amazon has also just published a round-up of Alexa, Echo and Fire TV features added or improved throughout February 2022.
Notify when Nearby makes your Echo speaker play a sound when you have unread notifications and get within range of the device.
This is an alternative to the notification light signal, which Amazon says should prove “especially useful for customers who may not be able to see visual alerts.”
Thankfully, it does not simply rely on an Echo speaker taking sound heard through the microphones as an indication you are nearby.
Notify When Nearby uses your phone’s Bluetooth, location data and Voice ID instead. The feature is turned on and off in the Accessibility section of the Alexa app.
Amazon has also made some changes to the Fire TV experience. You can ask Alexa to “open the guide” to access the TV guide.
And you can add extra channels to the guide by pressing the Menu button on Fire TV remote from inside the guide, and selecting Add Channel.