Amazon Polly achieves HIPAA eligibility

Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and to build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. The Amazon Polly API is now an AWS HIPAA Eligible service.

With dozens of lifelike voices across a variety of languages, you can select the ideal voice and build speech-enabled applications. For example, Inhealthcare is the UK’s largest specialist provider of diagnostic and healthcare solutions. Using Amazon Polly, Inhealthcare has created a digital infrastructure that supports remote home monitoring for the entire UK population. In this use case, automated telephony is a perfect communication channel to deploy such services at scale, because nearly everyone can use it, even if they do not have access to the internet or own a smartphone. And for many older people, the telephone is a piece of technology they are comfortable with and confident using. Read the blog post to learn more about Inhealthcare’s use of Amazon Polly to deliver care for patients.

HIPAA Eligibility applies to all AWS Regions where Amazon Polly is available. See the Architecting for HIPAA Security and Compliance on Amazon Web Services Whitepaper for information and best practices about how to configure AWS HIPAA Eligible Services to store, process, and transmit PHI.

If you have a Business Associate Addendum (BAA) in place with AWS, you can immediately start using Amazon Polly to generate speech from text containing PHI. If you do not have a BAA in place with AWS, or have any other questions about running HIPAA-regulated workloads on AWS, please contact us.

About the Author

Binny Peh is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager for AWS machine learning solutions. In her spare time, she indulges in too much television and is an aspiring foodie. Binny’s glass is always half-full, and she believes in the power of positive thinking.