Alexa can refill your prescription and remind you to take it
There are tight privacy controls for access to your medication info.
Amazon's healthcare push now includes a simple but important convenience: the ability to manage y our prescriptions from your smart speaker. The company has partnered with Omnicell to let Alexa not only remind you when to take your medication, but to refill it when you're running low. Once you've linked your pharmacy account and enabled your pharmacy's skill, you'll get reminders based on your prescription data -- if you're not sure what you're supposed to take, you can ask. If you need more, you can tell Alexa to "refill my prescription" to put the pharmacy to work.
There are multiple privacy layers to be sure others aren't prying into your medication history. You'll need to use both your Alexa voice profile and a personal passcode to access data. Also, any interactions with the pharmacy skill are redacted to prevent someone from simply looking at the mobile app.
Right now, the feature is only available to Giant Eagle Pharmacy customers who install the store's skill. More pharmacies are coming in 2020, however. It's safe to say this is part of a considerably larger plan. Amazon is involved in the pharmaceutical world thanks to its PillPack acquisition, and there's little doubt that it wants to integrate PillPack with its other businesses as closely as possible -- it might just be a matter of time before Alexa is refilling prescriptions through Amazon's own shop. Even if you don't care for the official store, though, this could make the Echo (or any other Alexa-ready device) a go-to option if you regularly take prescription meds and don't want to rely on mobile apps to keep track.
