There’s no need to Google your symptoms anymore if you are an Alexa owner in the UK. Amazon has teamed up with the NHS to offer a novel way of accessing health information. Now, when you ask Alexa something along the lines of “Alexa, what are the symptoms of flu?” Amazon’s algorithm will use information from the NHS website rather than a general search across the web. Or that time an Alexa accidentally recorded a woman’s private conversation and sent it to her husband’s employee. Yet they’ve been handed to a foreign company that’s both a defence contractor and targeted advertiser.”https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-health-information-available-through-amazon-s-alexa

Source: The Irish Times July 18, 2019 06:00 UTC