NCBI Smart Hub Tutorial – Part One – Sight Loss Conditions

Vision Ireland service users ex Rose of Tralee Aine Sullivan and comedian Robbie Ford standing face to face and laughing in front of a black and glowing blue background at the launch of myVision Ireland Smart Hub

Welcome to part one of the myNCBI Smart Hub Tutorial blogs. In these blogs, we will outline how you can make the most of your experience using the myNCBI Smart Hub. At the start of each of these blogs, we will remind you how to get the Smart Hub fired up on your smart speaker, such as an Amazon Alexa device or a Google Nest device.

How do I get started?

To launch the Smart Hub skill simply begin with the command that engaged your smart speaker whether this be ‘Alexa’ or ‘Hey, Google’.

For example, you can said: “Alexa, talk to myNCBI” or “Alexa, speak to myNCBI” or some variation of this command.

Once the skill has launched, you will hear the main options menu which lists the information you can access.

The skill provides information on the following topics:

  • NCBI Core Services
  • NCBI Additional Services
  • Sight Loss Conditions
  • NCBI Labs Services
  • Advocacy

In this blog we will focus on learning about sight loss conditions through the Smart Hub.

Sight Loss Conditions

Once you’ve launched the Smart Hub as outlined above, If you want to hear information on any of the 17 most common sight loss conditions, you can simply engage your smart speaker again and say “tell me about sight loss conditions”.

When you do this, you will be given a list of the sight loss conditions which are listed on the Smart Hub. Once you’ve heard the condition you want to learn about, you can respond to your speaker by saying the name of whichever condition you would like information about. The Smart Hub will then provide you with a general definition, symptoms, treatments, and how NCBI can help you.

If you already know exactly which section you want to hear, just say the name of the condition followed by the name of the section, for example, “tell me about amblyopia treatments”.

A short video below also goes through the process of activating the Smart Hub to learn about sight loss conditions.