The invention, a voice-operated alarm system, includes an alarm and a receiver. The alarm is comprised of a microphone unit, a voice detector, a noise reduction unit, a speech recognizer or a keyword spotter which can recognize predefined keywords, and a signal transmitter. The speech recognizer and the keyword spotter can be speaker dependent, speaker independent, or both. A speaker-dependent system needs training, while a speaker-independent system does not. A receiver is located near the alarm and is connected to a telephone or data network. The receiver further communicates with the emergency monitoring center. Furthermore, the alarm system can also be implemented as a wireless phone with keyword spotting/recognition function. In this embodiment, the alarm user can communicate with the operators directly, like a cell phone, but the dial up function is replaced by uttering keywords. In this implementation, the receiver may not be necessary.