FIR Podcast Network

For Immediate Release: Podcasts for Communicators

  • Home
  • Shows
  • Episodes
  • People
  • Blog
  • Subscribe
  • Sponsors
  • Contact Us
    • Join the FIR Podcast Network
  • Archives
You are here: Home / FIR Interviews / FIR Interview: Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Sandhya Pruthi and Jay Maxwell on Creating a Smart Audio First Aid Skill
FIR Interviews

FIR Interview: Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Sandhya Pruthi and Jay Maxwell on Creating a Smart Audio First Aid Skill

October 19, 2017 by Shel Holtz Leave a Comment

https://traffic.libsyn.com/fir/fir-mayoclinic.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:49 — 10.6MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Email | RSS

Voice will be the interface to everything.

Searching “voice technology” on Google News produces headlines like “Why voice technology is a marketer’s new best friend,” “Voice technology will change your relationship with consumers,” “Kayak sees potential with voice technology-assisted bookings,” and “Google goes all in on voice first with its latest product.”

The Mayo Clinic has a reputation for experimenting early with new and emerging technologies, both in medicine and in delivering information to and engaging with patients and healthcare consumers. Mayo dove into social media when most hospitals and other healthcare organizations were avoiding it over fears about regulatory compliance and patient privacy. So many hospital communicators got in touch with Mayo to learn about its social media activities that it established the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network to support the industry’s use of social media.

It’s no surprise, then, that the Mayo Clinic has been an early adopter of smart audio, the voice technology that underlies the Amazon Alexa platform, Google Home, and other Artificial Intelligence-based systems that enable appliances like speakers to interact with people through natural language. Mayo first entered the space with its Mayo Clinic Radio News Minute, available for Alexa users to add to their Flash Briefing. Now, the Clinic has introduced an Alexa First Aid skill, which “provides you with self-care instructions for dozens of everyday mishaps and other situations and provides quick, hands-free answers from a trusted source.”

In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz talks with Dr. Sandhya Pruthi, the Mayo Clinic’s chief medical editor and associate medical director for Content Management and Delivery, and Jay Maxwell, senior director of Health Information, about the development of the skill, how it works, how they measure its effectiveness, and their approach toward preparing for a voice-enabled world. The interview includes a brief demonstration of the Clinic’s Alexa skill.

About our conversation partners

Dr. Sandhya Pruthi received her M.D. degree from the University of Manitoba, Canada in 1990, and completed a Family Medicine residency at the Mayo Clinic in 1994. She was the Director of the Breast Diagnostic Clinic at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN from January 2002 to July 2010.  She is a Consultant in the Department of General Internal Medicine and a Professor of Medicine.  Dr. Pruthi’s research area is in breast cancer prevention. Her clinical expertise is the management of women at increased risk for breast cancer and providing pre-operative counseling to women newly diagnosed with breast cancer. She is the Mayo Clinic principal investigator on several national breast cancer prevention and biomarker trials aimed at reducing the risk of breast cancer. She has collaborated in other women’s health trials studying complementary and alternative therapies for the management of menopausal symptoms and improving the quality of life of breast cancer survivors. Dr. Pruthi is the Chief Medical Editor and Associate Medical Director for Content Management and Delivery for Global Business Solutions. She is an Associate Medical Director for Development and physician partner in the Center for Innovation at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Pruthi is a board member of the National Consortium of Breast Centers (NCBC).

In his role as senior director of health information, Jay Maxwell oversees content development for Mayo Clinic’s Global Business Solutions. Jay has nearly three decades of publishing experience in web, mobile, print and broadcast channels. He has led large and diverse teams in both for-profit and non-profit organizations. As a journalist, Jay has served on a state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and has been a recipient of SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi Award. Connect with Jay on Twitter at @johnjaymaxwell.

About our sponsor

Thanks to Ragan Awards for sponsoring this episode. Use the code INTERVIEWS to save 25% on the following:

  • The 2017 Video & Visual Awards which will celebrate the best corporate videos and visual designs from the past year. The final deadline is Oct. 25.
  • The 2017 PR Daily Awards which will focus on the industry’s most successful PR campaigns, publications, and events. The early bird deadline is Oct. 13 and the final deadline is Nov. 8.
  • The 2017 Ace Awards which honors individual PR practitioners, in-house teams, and agencies. The early bird deadline is Oct. 27.

Visit Ragan.com/Awards to enter.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related Posts

  • FIR Interviews
    FIR Interview: Mayo Clinic's Lee Aase on Periscoping his colonoscopy
  • #006: How The Mayo Clinic Uses Periscope For Healthcare Communications
  • FIR #216: FIR Joins MPN

About Shel Holtz

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a commercial general contractor headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives and communications research. Full bio

Filed Under: FIR Interviews

Share Your Comments on FIR Interviews

FIR Community on Google+Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Social connect:
Login Login with facebook
Login Login with twitter
Login Login with google

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Connect with FIR

Support FIR

Become a Patron

Pledge as little as $1 per month to help support the existing stable of shows, make new shows possible, and be part of the growth of the FIR Podcast Network.

FIR Podcast Network Shows

FIR SPONSOR

The FIR Podcast Network is made possible by the generous support of our sponsors, of which we currently have none. Please reach out to us if you are interested in sponsoring FIR. Contact us at fircomments@gmail.com.

Looking for Older Episodes?

Visit the FIR Podcast Network Archives at forimmediaterelease.biz.

Join Our Facebook Community

Facebook Group Icon

FIR Podcast Network on Twitter

My Tweets

We Want Your Feedback

Email comments with or without audio attachments (5 MB/3 minute limit) to fircomments at gmail dot com.

North America Comment Line:
+1.415.895.2971

Europe Comment Line:
+44.20.3239.9082

Skype: fircomments

Promote FIR!

Let your readers and colleagues know about FIR by adding a logo to your blog or web page. Get it here!

FIR Podcast Network Logo

Help Spread the Word about FIR!

GaggleAMP: spread the word about FIR!

License

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

FIR Podcast Network website © 2023 Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson | Community Guidelines | Privacy Policy

Website development by WP Fangirl. Album art and design by Effective Edge Communications.