In a blog post published on Tuesday, Amazon announced Alexa Together, a new service designed to help aging adults enjoy a higher quality of life by promoting independence. The company says the service builds upon the existing Care Hub infrastructure, which was announced last year and launched just over a year ago. According to Amazon, Alexa Together is meant to “help aging customers feel more comfortable and confident living independently, and give their family peace of mind.”
“Today, Amazon is launching Alexa Together, a new subscription service designed to help aging customers feel more comfortable and confident living independently, and to give their entire family peace of mind. This service takes what customers have loved about the Care Hub—the activity feed, Care alerts, and easy ways to stay connected—and delivers an even more helpful experience,” Amazon wrote in the announcement. “The service is designed to leverage the best of ambient technology—being there for customers when they need it, and fading into the background when they don’t. An Alexa Together connection is created when an aging customer and caregiver sign up. All it takes to get started is an Alexa Together subscription and a supported Alexa-enabled device, like an Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show for the aging loved one. The aging customer doesn’t need to do anything else. They can just go about their day-to-day with a little extra peace of mind.”
Alexa Together has a slew of features, all of which predictably make use of the voice-first capabilities of Alexa. They require an Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show device. Highlights include Urgent Response and Fall Detection Response. The former allows a user to say “Alexa, call for help” and the assistant will notify emergency services, as well as the person’s primary contact such as their caregiver. This is obviously available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The latter involves a collaboration with third-party vendors Assistive Technology Service and Vayyar, who manufacture discrete fall detection devices such as ATS’s SkyAngelCare pendant. Once paired with Alexa, pressing the Help button on the pendant will cause Alexa to again notify emergency services that the person has fallen and needs assistance. The functionality is similar in spirit to the fall detection feature in Apple’s watchOS, which headlined Apple Watch Series 4 on its release in 2018. Once a fall is detected, Siri alerts emergency services.
Amazon notes Alexa Together was built to be privacy conscious. The Activity Feed, for example, is designed to give caregivers a high-level view of what their patient was doing at the time of an incident. It does not give insight into specific information such as what song or podcast or television show they were engaged in at the time.
Alexa Together can be subscribed to by either a person needing care or someone providing it. It’s available for $19.99 a month or $199 a year; there’s also a six-month free trial. Existing Care Hub customers receive a free year until December 7, 2022.
