Americans are welcoming voice assistants into their homes with more than 36 percent of consumers owning a smart speaker and 75 percent of owners using them at least daily. People are finding that voice technology is not only a simpler form of communication but that it can also be a comforting source of information, entertainment and even companionship. But there is so much more that this technology can offer beyond the consumer standpoint, which has focused primarily on entertainment features.

From an employer perspective, voice technology is an opportunity to help employees manage their family's health and benefits in the comfort of their home.

While voice assistants are one of the fastest-growing consumer technology trends in the home, there have been some barriers to providing the service as a benefit to employees and health plan members. The voice technology that has been implemented by the healthcare industry is extremely fragmented consisting of specialized skills for specific conditions, hospitals, or medical devices, that must be enabled for each specific company. In addition, platforms need to easily integrate into existing company benefit offerings.

For health care specifically, it is also important that a platform is dedicated to health, secure and HIPAA compliant. For employers, the technology also needs to be easy to implement and simple for an employee to ask questions and get quick answers to health and benefits information. For example, employees need to understand the cost of care and be able to easily ask and receive procedure pricing in their area.

But there is a solution. When implemented as part of a comprehensive health-focused platform, voice technology overcomes many barriers of use for both employees and their employer's human resources (HR) team, including ease-of-use. Voice technology allows employees and their family members to just ask a device a question versus accessing a computer or mobile device or contacting their HR department.

Voice assistants can also help address time management issues such as forgetfulness and lack of routine. This technology can provide users with a simple form of communication, integrated into their home, that makes it easy for them to seek out answers and set up reminders. In addition, employees can be prompted for timely prescription refills, reminders to administer medicine, learn about cost alternatives for prescriptions and better understand the proper use and side effects. Voice assistants can also help bridge an information gap where there is a lack of knowledge; with a database about proper use and side effects.

Voice technology in the home can also help make a family's health a priority. It allows employers to not only engage with the employee, but also with all of the dependents on the health plan. It can keep plan members on track with fitness goals and reminders to work out, and provide health monitoring such as blood pressure and weight. It can also make sure the family gets immediate answers to health and benefits questions 24/7 including pricing estimates and answers during busy times such as open enrollment.

Employers and brokers should be thinking about voice technology now and how they can implement it for the employee population for 2020. Some questions to consider when looking at vendors include:

How secure is the platform?
Can this be easily integrated into our company benefits offering?
Can the platform be personalized for our employee base?
Can the product be easily integrated with our current health plan offering?
Does the system offer any additional devices such as a personal emergency response system?
Can the product be customized for specific family members?
Can the system be accessed by a caregiver?

When an employee is provided with a simple and easy technology in the comfort of their own home, they can be empowered to seek out answers to benefit, health, and medical questions whenever it is convenient for them. This type of engagement benefits both the employee and their employer to help increase utilization of pricing and benefit information.

Janice Washeleski is chief commercial sales & marketing officer at HandsFree Health.

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