"Check your feet", "Monitor your blood sugar level", "Have you taken your medications?"
That is the type of suggestions that diabetes patients can listen to Alexa using Sugarpod, a diabetes care plan enabled for Wellpepper's voice, and who has won the first prize of a contest sponsored by the MSD pharmaceuticalvalued at $ 125,000 (106,000 euros).
For Alexa Diabetes Challenge, Wellpepper created a prototype scale, integrated into a diabetes care plan, which scan and record images of patients' feet.
In this sense, because diabetes can cause nerve damage and affect the circulation of blood at patients' feet, it is important that they review the problems to detect any wound or ulcer from the beginning.
"Users can also use their voices to complete daily tasks, from registering blood sugar and meals to monitoring adherence to medication"
"The current scale prototype only produces images, but will eventually do thermographic detection and neuropathy detection," explains Anne Weiler, co -founder and CEO of Wellpepper.
With Sugarpod, users can also use their voices to complete daily tasks, from registering blood sugar and meals to monitoring adherence to medication."The voice is very exciting. We noticed that people really wanted to interact with him, both clinicians and patients. People wanted to continue the conversation and were quite colloquial in the way they spoke," says Weiler.
For his part, Tony Álvarez, president of MSD Japan, explains that "new technologies are creating opportunities to use digital health to help people handle a chronic disease."
Thus, "a purpose of Alexa Diabetes Challenge was to identify new ways to use the technology already present in the daily routine of a patient," says Álvarez.
It should be noted that this challenge began last April and, together with the sponsorship of MSD, was supported by Amazon Web Services and Luminary Labs.