Amazon Alexa Would Soon be Able to Identify a Heart Attack and Save Lives

Heart attacks are one of the biggest reasons behind deaths all over the world, but Amazon’s Alexa is going to introduce a service that could preempt heart attacks.

Heart failures are one of the biggest reasons behind death all across the world, and the failures that happen outside hospitals are particularly deadly. Individuals who suffer from a heart failure completely out of the blue are extremely susceptible to suffering from long term damage or even death. However, Amazon’s Alexa seems to have come up with a solution and have decided to license the tool created by a team of researchers at the University of Washington. The tool in question is being called a super vector machine (SVM) and is meant to monitor an individual’s surroundings. The monitoring is supposed to look for any indication of a heart attack, and if the tool does identify anything amiss, then it can place a call so that medical help reaches the person as soon as possible.

When a person has heart failure, he usually has difficulty with breathing and gasping for air is a common effect. The SVM tool will be able to recognize such changes. In medical terms, it is called agonal breathing, and the tool has been trained to recognize such breathing within a bedroom environment. So far, this took has been used on the Amazon Echo, but it will also be included in devices like iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S4, both of which are compatible with Alexa.

According to data released by the researchers, the tool has been quite accurate so far and been able to identify instances of heart failure correctly with a success rate of 97%. An associate professor at Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington stated,

We envision a contactless system that works by continuously and passively monitoring the bedroom for an agonal breathing event, and alerts anyone nearby come to provide CPR. And then if there’s no response, the device can automatically call 911.

Needless to say, it is a landmark development and has the potential of making Alexa an indispensable service for millions of people all over the world. It remains to be seen when the service is launched widely.