Don’t rely on digital assistants for CPR instructions, researchers say

Hey digital assistant: Tell your programmer that researchers want your CPR instructions to be “more standardized” and “evidence based.”

For a recent study, a team from Mass General Brigham, New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Boston Children’s Hospital posed eight CPR- related questions apiece to four different kinds of digital assistants. Responses were evaluated by two board-certified emergency medicine physicians.

Nearly half of the responses (13) were unrelated to CPR, such as providing information on a movie titled “CPR” or a link to Colorado Public Radio News. Nine suggested calling emergency medical services, while 11 provided CPR instruction and four included verbal instructions.

“Our findings suggest that bystanders should call emergency services rather than relying on a voice assistant,” said senior study author Adam Landman, chief information officer and senior vice president of digital at Mass General Brigham and an attending emergency physician. “Voice assistants have potential to help provide CPR instructions, but need to have more standardized, evidence-based guidance built into their core functionalities.”

The researchers also call on the makers of digital assistants to use common phrases associated with CPR instructions and establish a “single set of evidence-based content items across devices, including prioritizing calling EMS for a suspected cardiac arrest.”

The study was published online in JAMA Network Open.