Tantleff Discusses Use of Voice Assistants in Health Care

Partner Aaron Tantleff was quoted in a Wired article, “Does Your Doctor Need a Voice Assistant,” about the launch of voice application technology in the health care field.

Tantleff pointed out that one of HIPAA’s key privacy protections is a rule that says businesses should only collect the minimal amount of information necessary, a provision that he says is fundamentally at odds with such data-hungry neural networks. “When you’re talking about AI in the health care space, the appetite to capture more and more data becomes insatiable,” he said.

Voice assistants also raise questions about unauthorized disclosures in the exam room, Tantleff said. “We already know these listening devices can get hacked and allow third parties to record conversations,” he said. “In a medical setting, there’s a very different level of risk. What are companies doing to prevent that from happening?”