To prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to continue responding to healthcare needs, hospitals are rapidly adopting telehealth and other digital health tools to deliver care remotely. Intelligent conversational agents and virtual assistants, such as chatbots and voice assistants, have been utilized to augment health service capacity to screen symptoms, deliver healthcare information, and reduce exposure. In this commentary, we examined the state of voice assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa) as an emerging tool for remote healthcare delivery service and discussed the readiness of the health system and technology providers to adapt voice assistants as an alternative healthcare delivery modality during a health crisis and pandemic.

中文翻译：

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语音助手准备好在健康危机和大流行期间支持医疗保健服务

为了防止 COVID-19 的传播并继续满足医疗保健需求，医院正在迅速采用远程医疗和其他数字医疗工具来远程提供护理。智能对话代理和虚拟助手（例如聊天机器人和语音助手）已被用来增强健康服务能力，以筛查症状、提供医疗信息和减少接触。在这篇评论中，我们研究了语音助手（例如 Google Assistant、Apple Siri、Amazon Alexa）作为远程医疗服务的新兴工具的现状，并讨论了医疗系统和技术提供商是否准备好将语音助手作为替代方案健康危机和大流行期间的医疗保健提供方式。