Telecare Aware

Local item highlights the tensions inherent in changing services. Camden New Journal item.

Blackpool councillor, Lily Henderson, is using her fall experience to promote the service in which she now has a personal as well as professional interest. The former mayor of Blackpool broke her arm last month after falling in her kitchen and was on the floor for 45 minutes before being discovered by her grandson. Now the cabinet member for adult social care, housing and health is getting a helping hand from the ‘Vitaline’ service run by her own department.

Councillor Henderson, who was awarded the MBE in 2005 for her voluntary work, is delighted with the system. She said: “It’s fantastic and I think every home should have Vitaline’s monitoring system installed. It doesn’t matter how old you are!”

Councillor Henderson

According to the press release “The ecosystem is built upon three pillars: patient facing devices, content and software, and services. To support its introduction, Honeywell is releasing the LifeStream Platform and Genesis DM telehealth device.” More details.

At CeBIT Eurasia (Istanbul, 2-7 Oct) the two companies demonstrated: Wireless homecare hubs; Wireless ECG; HeartOne; Medical Receiving Software; SKeeper personal safety phone. Details in press release.

A new blog by Bob Pyke on the use and dissemination and promotion and discussion of national and international e-health/telehealth. Bookmark this one, or read with an Atom feed (bottom of the page).

“Doctors usually don’t get paid for interpreting data collected remotely, but they can still get sued if they make a mistake…While the most obvious barrier to telehealth is Medicare and the reluctance of health insurers to pay for it, said Burgiss, perhaps the biggest barrier is that clinicians can’t yet imagine it as a duty on par with office visits.” This study sows some of the barriers to the take up of remote patient monitoring.

So what was wrong with OFSICK? Sorry, OFCARE? Care and Health is seeking your suggestions.

Community matrons blamed primary care trusts’ cost-cutting for a failure to attract nurses into community matron posts and believe that DH has settled for an inferior service. [Community matrons should be the key advocates of home based health monitoring in the UK - Steve] Item by Healthcarerepublic.

Philips aims to leverage these relationships for Philips Lifeline’s products and services as well as for Philips’ in-house line of remote patient monitoring products and services.

Carl West has joined mediagrids from solarSoft Ltd “at an exciting time of rapid change and expansion – for both mediagrids and the telecare industry” Chris Williams, CEO at mediagrids continues “From time to time, an innovative new company explodes into a mature, stable market and redefines the technology landscape - and mediagrids is doing just that in the telecare industry.” Press release for more information.

Care and Health reports Secretary of State for Health Patricia Hewitt as revealing that commissioning rules will be changed to enable doctors to prescribe social care support such as home helps [!] and respite breaks for carers.

Not quite sure the source for the C&H report - see * below - but it appears to reference the (unnamed) conference speech mentioned in the DH press release on the launch of its Commissioning Framework for Health and Well-being published yesterday.

If it happens, this could be good news for telecare providers, especially those with health-oriented offerings. Paragraph 7.5 and subsequent paragraphs of the report are the relevant ones, although my reading is less radical than Ms Hewitt’s apparent spin - it is ‘encourages’ GPs through Practice-Based Commissioning (PCB) to be more inventive in the use of NHS funds. However, this has to be in the context of the legal constraints and after making a ‘business case’ to justify their intentions to the local Primary Care Trust (PCT). My guess is that this sets barriers too high for most GPs to bother with. It also ignores equality issues concerning bypassing Fair Access to Care Services (FACS) rules around social care provision for some people.

Care and Health story.

DH press release.

DH site for downloading the Commissioning Framework document.

* UPDATE 9 March
It appears that the original story was sourced from a Guardian conference on integrated health, social care and housing services. Read the original Guardian article.

Noted on the Government News Network site that offers the above-mentioned press release that you are invited to download Patricia Hewitt. Quite a lightweight download too.

The mayor describes the introduction of telecare as “a move into 21st century living.” Good news story from Doncaster Today.

A good run-through of patient-oriented technology in use in Singapore’s health system. This interesting read tells you where and what it is, how it works and why it is cool. SingHealth item.

Information on:

Invicta Telecare’s Annual Free Event

Medifest’07, India

Net-atHome2007, France

Visit the Telecare Events page for more information.