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Dr. Amit Nampalliwar
Reader & HOD,
Department of Roga Nidan & Vikriti Vigyana (Pathology),
Government Ayurved College & Hospital,
Bilaspur (C.G.)-495001, India.
Orcid Id : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6587-5735
Abstract— Voice-activated digital assistants (VADAs) are increasingly used as first-line sources of medication information, yet evidence on their accuracy and downstream patient outcomes remains fragmented. This study evaluated four voice platforms — Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant and a retrieval-augmented custom medication skill (MedVoice) — across 240 standardised medication queries per platform, and then tested a twelve-week deployment among 168 ambulatory patients. Platform accuracy ranged from 61.7% to 88.3%, and potentially harmful responses ranged from 8.3% to 1.7%. In the deployment phase, the VADA group gained 5.1 points on a 20-point medication knowledge scale against 1.3 points for leaflet-based controls (mean difference 3.6, 95% CI 2.81–4.39, p < .001). High adherence was recorded in 72.6% of VADA users versus 50.0% of controls (OR 2.65). Mean query resolution time fell from 168.3 to 42.6 seconds. Findings indicate that curated, retrieval-grounded voice channels — not general-purpose assistants — are suitable for medication information dissemination.
Keywords— voice-activated digital assistant; medication information; patient safety; medication adherence; conversational agents; health literacy
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