Alexa Healthcare Skills with Dr. Bob Kolock

VFH Episode 65

In this episode, Teri welcomes Dr. Bob Kolock, a retired physician executive and active Amazon Alexa skills developer.

Dr. Bob Kolock has over 35 years of experience in healthcare delivery. Since retirement, he has had the opportunity to spend more time on things that really interest him. That led him to begin learning JavaScript and the Amazon Alexa development process. To date, he has 5 Alexa Skills certified by Amazon. He is currently working on 2 more and one of the two is very much aligned with his healthcare career. It’s focused on improving the transition of care of patients who have undergone a medical procedure. He will be looking for partners to make this Alexa Skill a routine way to deliver post-procedure care instructions in health care delivery systems.

Key Points from Dr. Kolock!

Becoming an extremely prolific Alexa skills developer after retirement from the healthcare space.
The healthcare-oriented suite of skills that he’s developing.

Getting in Voice Technology

He retired 6 years ago and he had had an idea to build a smartphone tool to help manage foods in the pantry or refrigerator so someone could identify them before they got spoiled. He, therefore, started learning iOS, Android, JavaScript, and how to create an Alexa skill.
His first skill was Food Manager and he initially thought that a bar code scan would give the necessary information in as far as expiration dates were concerned, but they didn’t, so he had to find another way to import the information.

His Skills So Far

He has created a variety of 18 Alexa skills, 3 of which are revised, and a number of them have to do with healthcare and behavior change. They also relate to the website that he built to function with his database.
One of his most popular skills is called Our Little Secret, and the concept behind it is that a brother or sister gives the user secrets based on what they hear around the user’s house. This plays on the privacy concern but the secrets are fictitious and are meant to be funny.
Another one is Wine Jester where the idea is to hold a glass of wine to the smart speaker and it will say what the taste, fragrance, and components of the wine are.

Alexa Healthcare Skills with Dr. Bob Kolock

Healthcare Skills

One of his first healthcare skills was Blood Pressure Check, and it’s based on the American Heart Association guidelines. The user tells the skill what their blood pressure reading is and the skill gives them feedback as to where that blood pressure might fall.
Another one is My Weigh Loss Coach that helps users track their weight loss goals, and gives them positive or negative feedback based on their results.
On his website, one can set up text messages to themselves to help with behavior change, and hence he has a skill called Healthy Text Scheduler that sends users scheduled healthy eating texts.
The other one is Track My Dose, which helps people manage the medication they’re supposed to take on an as-needed basis.
He also has Kindness Counts, a skill that was inspired by all the negativity that’s been in the world. It helps people focus on the good things that are happening around us.
He also has two other skills that are geared towards helping physicians become more efficient so they can deliver care to more patients, and also help patients with their follow up care after a medical procedure.