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Lisa Evans ’23 Creates Alexa Skill for Amazon
Sophomore Lisa Evans is making a name for herself in the scientific community by creating an Alexa skill for Amazon that is a personalized COVID-19 outcomes risk calculator and presenting it at the 2020 Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) Global Symposium.
OHDSI is a multi-stakeholder, interdisciplinary collaborative whose mission is to improve health by empowering a community to collaboratively generate evidence that promotes better health decisions and better care. The organization has established an international network of researchers and observational health databases with a central coordinating center housed at Columbia University.
Over the summer Lisa created an Amazon Alexa skill that predicts a person's COVID-19 individual risk of hospitalization, need for intensive care unit (ICU) services or fatality, based on their age, sex and pre-existing medical conditions (using a personalized COVID-19 prediction model calculation created by the OHDSI community). The Alexa skill interacts with the person to ask them a few questions that they can answer verbally and then it tells them their predicted COVID-19 outcome risks.
Lisa’s Alexa skill has been certified by Amazon, with the full support of the OHDSI community, and it can be used by anyone with an Alexa device in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia or India. Just say "Alexa open odyssey evidence" to start the Alexa skill.
Lisa’s Alexa skill has been certified by Amazon, with the full support of the OHDSI community, and it can be used by anyone with an Alexa device in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia or India. Just say "Alexa open odyssey evidence" to start the Alexa skill.
Earlier this month, Lisa presented her Alexa skill at the 2020 OHDSI Global Symposium, which brought together a global research community for 18 hours of open science, international collaboration and community fun on October 19. The day included presentations from community members, panels that brought together leaders from a variety of major healthcare organizations, as well as network sessions and the annual collaborator showcase.
Lisa’s presentation titled "OHDSI Alexa Skill for a Personalized COVID-19 Outcomes Risk Calculator" was one of the 8-minute lightning talks presented during the symposium. To view Lisa’s presentation, click here.
