alexa-personal-health-assistant-skill

This Alexa Skill helps you keep track of your health by letting you know about your medical data like body vitals, appointments with your doctor, your prescriptions, etc., backed by a personal health assistant server.

Background

The necessary data for this Alexa Skill is provided by the personal-healthcare-server.

This project (Alexa skill + backend server + web app + mobile app) was created as part of submission for the 2017 HITLAB World Cup of Voice-Activated Technology in Diabetes presented by Novo Nordisk, an online hackathon on DevPost

The 2017 HITLAB World Cup of Voice-Activated Technology in Diabetes presented by Novo Nordisk (the “Challenge”) is a competition to identify emerging technologies that use voice recognition and voice activation to support diabetes care and management. ... The HITLAB World Cup is an international challenge of unparalleled diversity where innovators present original solutions to pressing global healthcare challenges ...

About

This custom skill helps you keep track of your health by letting you know about your body vitals viz., glucose levels, pressure, pulse & temperature collected from your personal IOT medical devices (like smartwatches, smart glucometer, smart thermometers, etc.,), perform tasks like book appointments with your doctor, view or remind you about your booked appointments, keep track of your daily medicine prescriptions, etc.,

As of now, this skill is just built on top of the raw event, triggered from the AWS Lambda function by the speech input (to be re-written using AWS-SDK library later).

Skill invocation name : Jackie :)

Key Terminologies

Term	Description
Intents	An intent represents an action that fulfills a user’s spoken request. Intents can optionally have arguments called slots.
Sample utterances	A set of likely spoken phrases mapped to the intents. This should include as many representative phrases as possible.
Custom slot types	A representative list of possible values for a slot. Custom slot types are used for lists of items that are not covered by one of Amazon’s built-in slot types

Folder Structure

File	Description
/speechAssets	speech input related artifacts
/speechAssets/intentSchema.json	intents vs slots vs sample utterance mapper
/speechAssets/sampleUtterances.txt	input utterance sample texts for each intent
/src	main source JS files
/src/intentHandlers	intent handler modules
/src/intentHandlers/create-appointment.js	helps creating new doctor appointment
/src/intentHandlers/get-appointment.js	helps getting saved appointments
/src/intentHandlers/get-prescription.js	helps retrieving daily prescriptions
/src/intentHandlers/get-vitals.js	helps getting vital parameter data
/src/config.js	project configuration like application id, server endpoints, etc.,
/src/index.js	main starter file that contains all intent handlers
/src/package-lock.json	auto-generated dependency tree specification
/src/package.json	project description and dependencies
/src/response-builders.js	Alexa response builder helpers
/src/rest-api.js	http helpers
/src/strings.js	Alexa output message strings
/src/utils.js	common helpers
/.gitignore	files to be ignored by Git ex: node_modules
/README.md	project documentation

Skill Invocation

This custom skill can be invoked by saying, [ Jackie is the skill's invocation name :) ]

Alexa, start Jackie.

Alexa would reply saying,

Hi, I am Jackie, your Personal Health Assistant! You can ask me about your medical data like prescriptions, doctor appointments, etc.,

Supported Intents

Simply put, an intent is a particular action to be carried out by Alexa based on our query.

• CreateAppointmentIntent: Helps creating an appointment with your doctor.

  You can say,

  Alexa, ask Jackie to schedule an appointment with doctor Charlie Harris on next Sunday at 5PM for diabetes regular checkup.

  Alexa replies,

  Creating appointment now. Your appointment has been successfully created with Dr. Charlie Harris for diabetes regular checkup on Sunday, Oct 28 for 1 hour !

• GetAppointmentIntent: Helps getting to know your booked appointments with your doctor.

  You can ask,

  Alexa, ask Jackie when is my next appointment ?

  Alexa answers,

  You have 1 upcoming appointment. It is with Dr. Charlie Harris for diabetes regular checkup on Sunday, Oct 28 for 1 hour.

• GetPrescriptionIntent : Helps to know about your day's prescription.

  You can ask,

  Alexa, ask Jackie what medicines should I be taking now ? Alexa, ask Jackie what medicines should I be taking today ?

  Alexa answers,

  You have 2 medicines prescribed today. First is Precose to be taken after breakfast, after dinner. Last is Glyset to be taken after lunch.

• GetVitalsIntent : Helps to know how your vitals are doing.

  You can ask,

  Alexa, ask Jackie how are my vitals looking ?

  Alexa answers,

  Your sugar level is high at around 140/95. Your pressure looks normal. Your temperature is normal. Your pulse looks normal.

Supported Slots

Each intent can have as many slots are required to get all necessary data to fulfil the intent.

• CreateAppointmentIntent would require 5 slots to get fulfilled.

  [ 
      {
        "name": "ApDate",
        "type": "AMAZON.DATE",
        "samples": [
          "on {ApDate}"
        ]
      },
      {
        "name": "ApDescription",
        "type": "LIST_OF_DESCRIPTION", // custom slot type with possible values like 'general checkup', 'diabetes checkup', 'fever checkup', etc.,
        "samples": []
      },
      {
        "name": "ApTime",
        "type": "AMAZON.TIME",
        "samples": [
          "at {ApTime}"
        ]
      },
      {
        "name": "DoctorFName",
        "type": "AMAZON.GB_FIRST_NAME",
        "samples": [
          "{DoctorFName}"
        ]
      },
      {
        "name": "DoctorLName",
        "type": "AMAZON.GB_FIRST_NAME",
        "samples": [
          "{DoctorLName}"
        ]
      } 
  ]
  

• GetAppointmentIntent would need 1 custom slot to get fulfilled.

  [
      {
        "name": "Time",
        "type": "LIST_OF_TIME", // custom slot type with values like 'now', 'today'
        "samples": []
      }
  ]
  

Upcoming Enhancements

• More dialog mode conversations
• Port existing functionalities using the standard aws-sdk library
• Support for multiple languages
• Support for more intents
• Handle all possible negative cases gracefully

References

• https://github.com/alexa/skill-sample-nodejs-howto
• https://developer.amazon.com/docs/ask-overviews/build-skills-with-the-alexa-skills-kit.html

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details