Lenovo Health has joined forces with Orbita, a connected home healthcare technology vendor, to unveil a virtual home care system at HIMSS17 based on two recently debuted products: Lenovo Smart Assistant and Orbita Voice.

Lenovo's Smart Assistant, first previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, is a voice-controlled speaker for the home that combines the Amazon Alexa voice platform with Lenovo styling and Harman Kardon speaker technology. Orbita’s Voice is a voice experience manager for healthcare that builds on other voice-assistant platforms like Amazon Alexa to enable intuitive, patient-centric home care experiences designed to improve patient engagement, care coordination and outcomes, the vendor said.

Integrating Orbita Voice with the Lenovo Smart Assistant is meant to demonstrate how natural voice assistant technology can help patients with chronic and post-acute care needs be more fully engaged in their wellness at home, the two vendors said. Enhancing a patient's ability to access and share information with providers, caregivers and family members contributes to improved care management, treatment adherence and medication compliance, the vendors added.

“There is a significant gap in the delivery of care; it’s not what happens when in front of your providers that’s most important, but what happens at home, making it a care setting,” said Tom Foley, director of global health solution strategy at Lenovo Health, in a statement. 

Voice is the user interface of the future and is transforming how healthcare executives think about patient engagement in home health care, added Nathan Treloar, Orbita president and chief operating officer.