New premium care based system online in US
Amazon’s new Alexa Together service, which the retail giant announced at its big September launch event, is now available in the US.
Alexa Together offers a way to take care of elderly relatives and those with special needs through an Amazon Echo-series speaker or display.
It’s a follow-up to the Alexa Care Hub, which went live last year. But unlike the free Care Hub, Alexa Together is a paid-for subscription service.
It costs $19.99 a month or $199 a year, and comes with a 6-month free trial (or a year free if you’ve already been using Alexa Care).
What justifies the cost? A 24/7 Urgent Response line is part of Amazon Alexa Together. This lets the person using the service talk to a trained call handler in an emergency, rather than just relying on a list of emergency contacts who might miss the alert.
Alexa Together supports third-party fall response sensors from companies including Vayyar and SkyAngelCare — so this urgent response line does not simply rely on the person asking Alexa for help. They can also use the “Alexa, call for help” voice command.
Other Alexa Together features happen on the carer’s side, and are similar to what we saw in Care Hub back in 2020.
You can add reminders and alerts to your loved one’s Echo, manage shopping lists and see an activity feed of their interactions with their Echo.
Alexa Together can also send you a notification if Alexa hasn’t been used by a certain time each day. More than one person can get access to these notifications and controls too.
A subscription appears to be based around the person cared for, rather than the carer. However, Amazon says this multi-person participation feature is coming next year.
In the Alexa Together app you’ll see four main ways to connect with the other person: Drop In, Call, Message and Remote Assist.
Drop In treats an Echo like a walkie talkie and Remote Assist is presumably where you interact directly with their instance of Alexa.
To get started, you’ll need to install at least one Echo or Alexa-equipped speaker into the person’s home. Amazon recommends using several.
Of course it would, but the system will clearly work better if interacting with Alexa becomes less onerous.
If you live in the US, you can sign up for Alexa Together right now.
