Amazon Alexa Nursing Skill Workshop

This workshop demonstrates how to develop a voice interface (Nursing Skill) for Amazon Alexa to interact with e-health applications and databases.

An example conversation would be like this:

You>> Open nursing skill
Alexa>> Welcome to Alexa Nursing Skill, please tell me your name
You>> My name is <>
Alexa>> Welcome <>, you can ask me about your health
You>> Blood Pressure Input
Alexa>> What is your sistolic pressure <>
My sistolic pressure is 115
Alexa>> What is your diastolic pressure <>
You>> My diastolic poressure is 75
Alexa>> Thanks <>

Introduction

You will learn how to build your own Alexa Skills to register your health data using voice interactions. As example we provide a complete interaction to ask your name and register your blood pressure. It can be easily customized to track Glucose, Emotional State, Weight, Blood Exam and more.

Table of Content

1. Create Alexa "Nursing Skill" using pre-configured Lambda
2. Create your own Lambda Function for Nursing Skill
3. Create your own DynamoDB table
4. Customizing Nursing Skill

1.Create Alexa Nursing Skill

First, let's create, configure and test a new Alexa Skill using a pre-existing Lambda function. After this step you will have your first Healthcare Skill working and then you can create your own Lambda function to customize or extend this skill to store different types of biometric data.

Step #1: Navigate to Alexa Developer Website: https://developer.amazon.com/alexa and click "Sign in"

Step 2: Click "Create your developer account" and fill the basic form

Step #2.1: Log using your account

Step #2.2: Access "Your Alexa Consoles -> Skill"

Step #2.3: You will be redirected to complete your account at developer.amazon.com

Step #2.4: Create your Alexa user at developer.amazon.com

Step #2.5: Accept the license

Step #2.6: Click "Save and continue"

Step #2.7: Click "Alexa" menu

Step #3: Navigate back to the Alexa Developer Webiste: https://developer.amazon.com/alexa and click in "Your Alexa Consoles -> Skills"

Step #4: Click "Add a new Skill"

Step #5: Configure Skill Name with "Nursing Skill" and choose "Custom"

Step #6: Select "Start from the scratch" and click "Choose"

Step #7: Configure the skill using the right side "Skill Builder CheckList". The invocation name is the one used to open the Alexa Skill, ex. "Alexa Open nursing skill". By default, the invocation name is the Skill name but you can change it.

Step #8: The invocation name is the one used to open the Alexa Skill, ex. "Alexa Open nursing skill". By default, the invocation name is the Skill name but you can change it.

Step #9: Open the code editor and paste in

Step #9.1: Click "Save Model" and then "Build Model", it will take some secondes to complete!

Step #10: Click "Endpoint" and choose "AWS Lambda ARN"

Step #11: Let's use our existing Lambda Function to fullfill intents in the backend. This ARN points to a pre-build Lambda function in our account.

Copy and paste this ARN-> arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:977842192436:function:Nursing

Step #12: Time to test! Click "Test" menu and enable this skill for testing

Step #13: Click and hold the Mic icon to start a conversation

You>> Open nursing skill
Alexa>> Welcome to Alexa Nursing Skill, please tell me your name
You>> My name is <>
Alexa>> Welcome <>, you can ask me about your health
You>> Blood Pressure Input
Alexa>> What is your sistolic pressure <>
My sistolic pressure is 115
Alexa>> What is your diastolic pressure <>
You>> My diastolic poressure is 75
Alexa>> Thanks <>

PART 2: Create your own Lambda Function to your Alexa Skill

Open your AWS Lambda Console

Now that we have our own skill using a pre-existing Lambda function that allows any skill to use it, you will learn how to create your own lambda function copying our code and then replace the Lambda ARN in your Alexa Nursing Skill.

Make sure you are using the US East (N. Virginia) AWS Region

Step #1: Create a new Lambda Function, click "Create Function"

Step #2: Choose "Author from scratch"

Name: NursingSkill
Runtime: NodeJS 8.10
Role: Custom Role
It will open IAM console to create the role

Step #3: Configure IAM role:

IAM Role: lambda_basic_execution
Policy Name: Create new Role Policy
Click Allow

Step #4: Configure the role in your function

Step #5: Add Alexa Skill Kit trigger

Step #6: Disable Skill ID verification

This way any skill can use trigger this Lambda. If you want to restrict you can pick you Alexa Nursing Skill ID and limit the execution for only one skill.

Step #7: Copy and paste into the code editor

Step #8: Save your lambda function

Step #9: Now you can copy your own Lambda ARN to the clipboard

Step #10: Open your Alexa Developer Console and click "Configuration"

Step #11: Paste the new Lambda ARN

Step #12: Create a DynamoDB table to store your data

PART 3 3.Create your own DynamoDB table

Open your Amazon DynamoDB Console

To finish your Nursing Skill using youtr own Lambda Function you must create a DynamoDB table and make sure that Lambda Function has the right permissions.