My 84 year old Dad would make use of Alexa calling capabilities but does not have a cell phone, and therefore cannot receive a text to setup contacts. Without contacts his failing memory needs to remember phone numbers. He has an iPod with contacts yet this cannot be used because it's not tied to a cell number and we cannot use a text to email kind of function to setup contacts. Even a manual contact entry would be sufficent for the 10-12 numbers he calls regularly. Would be most helpful in emergency situations..Alexa, Call Jay. Am aware of "Ask My Buddy" app which works, but will he remember to say "Alexa, ask My Buddy for help" when he's fallen? Meanwhile, "Alexa, call Jay" is natural. Alexa has great potential for seniors, many don't use cell phones.

We are developing a health care assessment system for CareMore Health in USA.
The skill would enable automatic health care assessment through alexa powered devices. The health care members would be asked with personalised question related to their health condition. The entire response would be updated to the electronic medical record of the member.
Nurse practitioners would be able to configure the questions and schedule the assessment. The members would be notified about the assessment through proactive events API.

Currently we are using AMAZON.MessageAlert.Activated schema to send the notification message.
The current notification would be like:
"You have one new unread message from Caremore checkin"

In order to provide more personalised message and notifications to the member, we would like the following message
"You have <messageGroup.count> pending assessment, do you want to take it now?"

Add ability to add a written command to a routine that would act as if the user spoke a voice command.

E.g.
Routine scheduled at 7:00 AM:
- turn on Light
- tell you something new
(New): - perform “Alexa, what is the weather in Boston?”
(New): - perform “Alexa, open Headspace”

This would enable skills in routines while leveraging the existing abilities of the Echo, just by allowing written commands to be interpreted as voice commands on a schedule. This should be fairly simple to implement with what it is already is capable of, but would immediately and hugely expand the usefulness and value of the device.

The problem I'm encountering. As I tie more and more smart devices to Alexa my home's security is dependent on my Alexa enabled devices' security. This is fine for the Fire tablet as it had a strong password. However, the Echo devices themselves are not secure and not always at the home. For example, I have a Dot at work to stream music through. Or if I take one to a vacation location where I am not the solve person responsible for granting access to the space.

My suggestion is to allow a device to be locked down when you leave the room. To be able to so something to the effect of "Alexa, lock alpha-three-zero-five". At this point this specific device will only respond to voice if the commend is something like "Alexa, unlock alpha-three-zero-five". I just picked Pickard's self-destruct authentication code for lack of anything better, but I think the idea is clear enough. Now I am free to leave my desk, or the room with the device while in mixed or unknown company without worry.

I'd settle for a way to do this in the app, even though it is painfully slow. It would still beat having to take the device with me when I leave.