Telecare Aware

A belated, for which I apologise, addition to the stories about the Taiwan British Trade and Cultural Office UK-Taiwan International Telehealth Conference, 18 September.

Professor Celler has the microphone

Saneth Wijayaratna, Business and Strategy Manager for Telemedcare, part of the UK team to visit Taiwan said “This is a really exciting time for Telemedcare. To be recognized as a leader in this field in a foreign market is fantastic achievement. The support from our British Trade & Cultural Office was second to none. Taiwan is an exceptional market as they have both a national and private healthcare service. They have some exciting business models to make Telehealth a mainstream service. We are very confident that our innovative technology and unique service models can play an important role in achieving this goal”. Read the press release on the Telemedcare website.

This piece from the UK’s Guardian neatly ties together the last two Telecare Soapbox items and the DLF’s Ask SARA development. “Designers might think the aged will need smart homes to make their lives easier, but it’s the simple things like can openers that really count”.

UK publishers Pavilion are just about to launch a new quarterly journal: Journal of Assistive Technologies. It is intended to focus on “how people use assistive and enabling technologies, rather than solely on the technology itself, and raise awareness of available technologies for a wide and varied readership”. Journal of Assistive Technologies website for further information.

I have previously pointed out (June 12) the astonishing lack of any information, other than an initial press release by Newham, about what these major projects (that are intended to produce a strong evidence base for the use of telecare and telehealth devices in context of the whole health and care system) are actually going to do, and who their technology partners in the projects are. It is now nearly a year since bids to participate were requested and four months since the ‘winning’ sites, Newham, Kent and Cornwall, were selected.

I am told that no information on the winning bids is available because they contain material that is ‘in commercial confidence’, and the reason for the silence is, according to the Department of Health’s Long Term Conditions Team, that: “All three sites are currently working on detailed implementation plans. These are soon to be submitted to the Department of Health for review and sign off.”

On Friday, a similar statement was posted on the website of the Long Term Conditions Demonstrator Programme (as it is also called), saying that “Robust and rigorous programme management practices are being employed at each site and centrally, in order that documentation records all the planning and implementation steps of the programme and captures learning and best practice to inform wider roll out for the future.”

Yes, the projects and the evaluations need to be robust, and it’s nice to know that the project plans are coming along well, but such a lengthy and hidden process hasn’t done their credibility any good. Let’s hope the long gestation period really does deliver the goods.

Read the full statement at the White Paper pilots: whole system long term conditions (LTC) demonstrator programme website.

Some of the pictures are very good, but the words ‘inept’ and ‘hamfisted’ spring to mind. Story from the Daily Mail.

Two different stories on the same topic by the same reporter, Alexandra Wood, combine to give a full picture of this development. Good local news story 1 and story 2 from Yorkshire Today.

A balanced local news story from Cumbria (by a reporter who knows the difference between ‘compared with’ and ‘compared to’ - hooray!).

EHealth Insider Primary Care does a neat job of digesting material from the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP).

Do we need another one? the writer asks. “Such a ‘Mobile Disease Management System’ is long overdue,” Professor Woodward is reported as saying in this article. He will work with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

Speaking at Tuesday’s announcement, Minister Martin said: “IDA Ireland worked closely with Intel to win this project…Digital health has been identified by Intel Corporation as a strategic area for the future and today’s announcement is a milestone for Ireland in terms of our potential to become a world centre, not just for ageing but also for other digital health projects.”

Additional information in this story from InfoWorld.

Philips Electronics demonstrated some of its latest technologies and concepts that have been designed to improve and contribute to the quality of people’s lives. The purpose of the event was to emphasize the importance of the opportunities that China is offering to Philips and vice versa. Includes information on some of Philips’ personal healthcare innovations.

The CAALYX project will develop and test a light, mobile device to monitor a number of vital signs and transmit the information to an intelligent data-logging system. While the two-year project is to be led by Spanish telecommunications firm Telefonica, Plymouth University will take a lead role in developing the technology. On the whole this project feels as though it is going over ground that has already been covered in other countries, but the item also reports that Limerick University is to develop fall detection accelerometers, which will be able to predict falls. The Engineer Online

Read the press release about it here. Visit Aerotel website to see products, etc.

The bland title of this webpage belies its way-out nature. It shows the US military testing heads-up displays to support patient monitoring in battlefield conditions. EMS Responder story.

In part I couldn’t resist this first newspaper story I’ve seen from Honolulu, but actually, it is a well-written and informative piece about telemedicine.