Sounds great, but the experience is far from perfect. This article from Greg Sterling describes some of the issues that he had while running some personal tests. The biggest—it was unable to recognize prescription and generic drug names, even after repeated, slow attempts. He isn’t alone in his experience. The customer review section of the WebMD Amazon page is starting to fill with reviews that describe the same issue.
Interestingly, Greg performed the same set of drug and side effect questions with Google home, and it went much more smoothly. He speculates that Google’s vast index, speech recognition capabilities, and strong content partnerships with doctors, medical illustrators, and even the Mayo clinic. These results align with some of larger voice search studies that have compared the two services. Time will tell if the WebMD Alexa “skill” works out its initial kinks, or if this launch was a bit too ambitious. Both Amazon and WebMD put their reputation on the line (to some extent) when they set customers expectations and then fail to deliver.