One area where Alexa shines, however, is when you’re sick. With the holiday season upon us, flu and cold season isn’t far behind—and the last thing anyone wants to do when they’ve got the sniffles is venture out into the world for medicine.
The Alexa platform has a wide range of skills that you can use to your advantage when you’re down with a cold. The following are 6 of the best Alexa skills that can help when you’re sick.
Dr. AI Is An Alexa Skill That Can Diagnose You
No one likes to go to the doctor. Even if you aren’t sick when you get there, you probably will be when after spending an hour and a half in the waiting room. On the other hand, not going to the doctor is courting disaster. If you have a cold that has you feeling horrible, but not horrible enough to go to the doctor, give Dr. AI a try.
Dr. AI is an Alexa skill that’s ideal for when you’re feeling sick. It uses the expertise of over 107,000 doctors from 141 fields of medicine to diagnose you based on your age, gender, symptoms, and other factors. It is provided courtesy of HealthTap, a company that provides medical technologies.
Dr. AI is no substitute for an actual physician, so if your symptoms worsen you should visit the doctor—but it can be useful when you think you have nothing more than a nasty cold and need to know what sort of over-the-counter treatment to take.
Alexa Can Order Some Medicines For You
You will need to activate voice purchasing in your settings. It’s turned off by default to avoid accidental orders by children or because Alexa heard the wrong phrase from the TV.
Alexa Can Have Soup Delivered To You
Alexa is no stranger to delivery services. The main one used with Alexa is GrubHub. Oddly enough, neither DoorDash nor UberEats seem to be represented despite the presence of an Uber skill.
It’s easy to eat junk food when you feel ill, but it’s far better to give your body what It needs—quality, healthy food that will give you the energy you need to beat the cold and get back on your feet.
Even if GrubHub isn’t your speed, there are a lot of other delivery options from restaurants like Panera Bread. Your might even have smaller, more local restaurants with Alexa skills.
If it comes down to it, Alexa can also provide you with recipes on how to make your own soup at home. Instead of reaching for something unhealthy, order warm soup to soothe the savage cold.
Alexa Can Order a Rideshare To Take You To The Doctor
If you’re sick and taking cold medicine, you shouldn’t drive. If you’re sick and physically weak, you shouldn’t walk around. Instead, ask Alexa to order an Uber, Lyft, or your preferred rideshare service to take you to your local physician.
It’s the safest option in both cases. The Alexa skill is easy to activate. Once you’ve linked your Uber or Lyft account to Alexa, she can automatically hail a ride to wherever you want to go.
Alexa Can Tell You The Status Of Your Prescription & When It Ships
If you use a delivery prescription service, Express Scripts can tell you when your order is shipped and keep you up to date on the status of your order.
This skill is limited, however; you need to be a member with Express Scripts and use an eligible service, but for those that qualify the skill brings a huge number of benefits. Package theft is prevalent, and even more so when it comes to medicines. Express Scripts can help you make sure you’re around when the order arrives.
Alexa Can Keep You Entertained While You’re Sick
The only good aspect of being under the weather is the excuse to binge-watch your favorite shows without feeling guilty. Of course, losing the remote can spell disaster—unless you have Alexa set up and linked to your favorite streaming services, that is.
The idea of your smart assistant evaluating your symptoms and providing a diagnosis seems a bit creepy (and to some people, far too invasive.)
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However, you may be looking for something in particular. Maybe you want a trivia game about your family, a fairy tale where your child is the star character or a guide to your home and neighborhood for a houseguest.
Well, guess what? You can make your own skill using Alexa blueprints. Here’s how!
Browse Alexa Skill Blueprints
Select a blueprint to view more details and check out examples. This helps you see how the babysitter blueprint can help when you’re away, or the family jokes blueprint can liven up quality time.
If you find one you want, pick Make Your Own on the skill information screen.
Create a Skill
The steps are the same whether you’re creating a skill with a blueprint on the web or on your mobile device. However, those steps may differ depending on the type of blueprint you select.
For instance, you’ll enter different information for a birthday trivia skill compared to one for flashcards, the pet sitter, or bedtime stories. You can see these steps when you select a blueprint to view its details.
To show you just how easy it is, we’ll create one on each device.
Make a Chore Chart Skill on the Web
For this first example, we’ll use the Chore Chart blueprint to create a skill on the website. This skill helps keep track of household chores and who is responsible for each one.
- Visit the Alexa Blueprints website, sign into your Amazon account, and choose a blueprint.
- As described above, select Make Your Own directly below the skill name. If you see a short tutorial for building the skill, choose Start Now when you get to the end.
- Next, you’ll be prompted to replace the details for the skill with your own. For the Chore Chart, we’ll fill in the names of our household members and chores.
- Select Next on the top right to move to the next step.
- Here again, you may be asked to enter more details for the skill. For the Chore Chart blueprint, we assign the chores to the household members. Just keep in mind that the number of prompts and requested details depend on the exact skill and blueprint.
- Select Next to continue.
- One step that you’ll find in most blueprints is for customizing the experience. This refers to how you interact with Alexa for that particular skill. For instance, you can enter introduction phrases for when someone opens the skill and then other phrases for when someone completes a chore. These are the phrases Alexa uses for that specific skill.
- Select Next to finish entering the details.
- The final step in creating a skill is to give it a name. Try to use something meaningful that you’ll remember but also something simple enough for Alexa to recognize.
- Select Next one last time to create the skill.
After a few moments to process all the information, your skill should be ready to use!
Make a Whose Turn Skill in the Mobile App
For this next example, we’ll use the Whose Turn blueprint to create a skill in the Alexa app. This skill prompts Alexa to choose whose turn it is to do something.
- Open the Alexa app on Android or iOS and select the More tab.
- Pick See More in the top section and choose Blueprints .
- Browse the options by category, just like on the website. Then, select the one you want to use and tap Make Your Own .
- Replace the details for the skill with your own. For the Whose Turn skill, we’ll add the names for Alexa’s choices.
- Tap Next on the top right to continue.
- The next step for the Whose Turn skill is to personalize the experience. This allows you to customize how Alexa picks a name. After you ask a question, Alexa uses the phrases and sound effects you select in this section. Optionally, you can scroll down for additional customization options.
- Tap Next to name your custom skill.
- Select the text on the name line to edit it or enter your own. Again, pick a meaningful name and one that’s easy for Alexa to recognize.
- Tap Next to create the skill.
You’ll see the progress as your skill is created and a confirmation when the process completes. You can tap the X on the top right to exit when you finish reviewing your skill.
Edit Skills You Create
Once you create a skill using Alexa Blueprints, you may want to make adjustments to it. You can do this on the web and in the mobile app too.
Your Skills on the Web
- Visit the Alexa Blueprints website and sign in. Select Skills You’ve Made at the top.
- You’ll see a list of your skills. Choose Details to the right to open the one you want to edit.
- On the right side, select Edit or Delete . You’ll notice you can also pick Share With Others to make it easy for your family or friends to access or Publish to Skills Store for other Alexa users.
Your Skills in the Mobile App
You can edit your custom skills easily in the Alexa mobile app as well.
- Go to the Menu tab.
- Select See More > Blueprints .
- On the Your Skills tab, select the blueprint you want to edit.
- Use the buttons at the bottom to make your changes.
Take Advantage of Alexa Blueprints
Even though there are many premade skills you can pick from, creating your own Alexa skills gives you great ways to personalize the experience on your Alexa devices, get tasks done, or have a little fun !
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