Amazon Echo to give pensioners medicine alerts

UK pensioners in adult social care are to be given Amazon Echo speakers to remind them to take medication, and when their carer is due to visit.

In what it claims is a world first, Hampshire County Council has teamed up with Amazon and will give the voice-activated devices to 50 people in a trial set to begin by the end of the year and run throughout 2018.

The Echo, which costs £149.99 ( www.amazon.co.uk/ echo), connects to the web to give you answers to questions you ask it. It can, for example, provide weather forecasts, sports results and traffic updates, as well as answer more general questions, and play music.

Users activate an Echo by saying out loud ‘Hey Alexa’ – the name of Amazon’s virtual assistant, and its rival to Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri. The more you use it, the more it adapts to your voice and preferences.

The trial will make use of a special version of the Echo which Amazon has designed to connect to movement sensors in people’s homes, so it can remind them to have a drink when they enter the kitchen, for instance.

The council, which received £50,000 from the Local Government Association to help implement the scheme, said people would also be able to ask the Echo for suggested walking routes, in order to exercise regularly.

Cllr Liz Fairhurst, the council’s executive member for adult social care and health, said: “We are excited about the possibilities this project could open up in the future, and its potential to benefit the future of social care.”

She suggested that the trial would save the council money by helping people “support and manage” their needs in their own homes, thereby avoiding “the need for additional care packages”. On its website ( www.snipca.com/25517), the council said the Echo could “reduce social isolation in the eldery”.

Do you think this a good use of Amazon Echo? Let us know: letters@computeractive.co.uk

Time to take your medicine