Are you breastfeeding or planning to breastfeed? Testers are needed to trial the new Start4Life Amazon Alexa breastfeeding assistant

[JustineBMumsnet]

Public Health England (PHE) have asked us to find 20 Mumsnetters to test a new Start4Life Amazon Alexa breastfeeding assistant - designed to help support women who are breastfeeding.

Here’s what PHE has to say: “Breastfeeding is great for mum and baby but it’s something you have to learn together. To help you, and complement the support you receive from healthcare professionals, peer supporters, family or friends, PHE has created a new Start4Life Amazon Alexa Breastfeeding Assistant. All the information provided by the Breastfeeding Assistant is NHS-approved and is based on questions asked by thousands of new mums, and it’s available 24/7. We hope you find the Breastfeeding Assistant helpful and would like to hear about your experience of trying it so we can make it as useful as possible to all breastfeeding mums.”

If selected, you’ll be sent an Amazon Echo Dot to test the assistant for up to two weeks and then be asked to give feedback via a survey. To take part, you’ll need to have a baby under 10 weeks old who you are planning to breastfeed between 15th January and 29th January 2018. All those who give feedback will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher.

If you’re interested, please sign up here.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs apply

I'm in wales with a 10 week old. Not eligible?

If Alexa could log the times of feeds and tell you which boob you’re on next time you go to feed, id say this is a genius idea!!

Hi I breastfeed my 4 month old and I also did my 3 year old. I'm in England also :)

This sounds creepy as fuck and also potentially infuriating. Like a PP I am imagining a chirpy voice at 3am regurgitating standard advice - which never works after midnight when you are alone and your baby has apparently developed some type of fault and is doing exactly the opposite of what all the books say.

The only really useful advice I have ever had on bf is from an actual mum and trained bf counsellor at my local bf support group, who'd actually lived it and could observe latch etc and teach me about things like flipple. And MN of course!

You can't replace the human for this.

This is great to get a free dot but I'm a bit cynical - sometimes you need someone to check latch/ tongue tie and reassure you that it's not just that you're not making enough milk. In fact that is exactly why I joined MN 6 years ago and I'm so grateful to the poster who posted a pic of a tongue tied baby which allowed me to identify it in my son.

Done.

DD is 8 days old so within your target audience!

I signed up on the previous thread. Do I need to sign up again?

Hi all - thanks for your interest in the test and comments.

PHE has asked us to confirm that for this particular product test participants must have a English post code (not Scottish, Welsh or from NI or Eire) and and that no personal NHS data will be sought or shared with Amazon.

Service provider: ‘We’re testing a new service that we’ve identified a gap in the market and the budget for. v1 will do x and y and we are now at user testing recruitment.’

Public: ‘This means of delivery wouldn’t have helped me and is therefore completely redundant. It needs to do z and a and b and c and give me the moon on a stick right now. Why has something so pointless already been released with no thought or testing? They’re all out to use our data, you evil corporates.’

Age old story. I like to hope there are points for trying.

Look you’ve said exactly what I have been thinking.

Good luck to whoever is chosen. When released to the public I’ll give it a go if still feeding.

Sounds bloody SCARY!!!

WTF has amazon got any interest in helping mums breastfeed?! Sounds like another private company scamming our NHS!

@nappyrat that's not what this is at all. Start4Life is an NHS organisation. They have developed an app that will present the same information about breastfeeding that is on their website, but via the Alexa voice system. It's using the Amazon Alexa system as a way to deliver information. Amazon won't have had anything to do with developing the app and it won't collect any personal data or have any way of knowing anything about your NHS information. There's no way that Amazon will have "scammed" the NHS. All that Start4Life will have done is used the standard software that Amazon makes available for other companies to use to develop their own apps. This standard software is free to use, anyone can download it and develop an app to run on the Alexa system.

It’s quite unfathomable how conspiracy theorists make mental leaps.conflating unrelated facts
No one is scamming the nhs
Scammers don’t seek consent or have eligibility criteria
This will be monitored and have been approved by ethics committee

But here the thing,many (wrongly) will just see this as big sinister corporate thang
The same folks who’ll ring their hands that nhs is useless,moribund and can’t connect with people

No, no conspiracy theories, but a lot of forms take advantage of the public sector.

Also, amazon is a profit making company. There must be something in it for them. Even just data collection.

Come on! Wise up.

firms, not forms

Wow so the NHS is working with Amazon now in order to mine people's data.

That speaker does nothing any smart phone can't do. Shame on the NHS, if this really works it should be available to all.

Wow people are paranoid.

This app is being trialled. Presumably if it's helpful and works well it will be made available to all. The whole point is to try a different delivery method to a traditional mobile phone/tablet app. Some people may prefer a voice based system.

If you think Amazon are mining data from their free API and toolkits then you should search the terms and conditions of use carefully. If this is not mentioned then maybe you should publicise the fact widely that you think Amazon et al are illegally collecting data. The Information Commissioner would be interested no doubt.

What's in it for Amazon is that if people want to use voice based apps then they are more likely to buy Amazons Dot/Echo etc technology, and then also more likely to pay for Amazon's services like Prime and so on. It's not rocket science, it's fairly obvious standard business motivations.

I don’t need to wise up,but some of you need to ease up on conspiracy theories
Your phone,your travel card,your debit card,loyalty cards all sources of info
Amazon has more than enough info via online searches,movies,prime etc. They don’t need to go skulking to surreptitiously obtain nhs data

The nhs tries new ways to engage in health promotion and reach people eg text message to remind of appts has reduced the dna rates

As I said this will have been approved via ethics committee and will be Evaluated

Yes because that's exactly how a data mining company works "I've got enough from searches I won't bother collecting any more"

The more they collect the more money it's worth and they are very secretive about it.

Shame on the NHS, if this really works it should be available to all.
The NHS don’t know if it works yet, that’s why they’re testing it.

@Ieatcake you say it should be available to all but then mention a smart phone, not everyone has one. Or do you mean available to people who have the same as you?

The information they give on this app will be available elsewhere, it’s just another way for people to access

It’s a v bleak world to see conspiracy and corporate ghouls everywhere. But knock yourself out
And do remember mn links with retailers and regularly has partnerships sharing data
Not to mention the DM regularly trawling for stories

Has anyone found if they've been chosen yet?

When will we know if we've been chose for this? I'm quite excited at the idea 🙈