Telecare Aware

November’s Whole Systems Demonstrator Action Network (WSDAN) newsletter was published on Friday and it’s starting to show some promise in terms of keeping the general world informed about the project’s development. If you didn’t get it, sign up for it. I’m not commenting on all the content.

First, the list of twelve WSDAN member sites has been published. These are sites that will get the ‘inside track’ on the experiences of the three demonstrator sites (Cornwall, Newham and Kent) and will be encouraged to apply emerging lessons to their situations. Some of these places were ones that originally applied to be a demonstrator site and all have interesting experience to pass back to the WSD sites. To take the first three examples, Barnsley has the longest-running experience of substantial users of Docobo equipment. Birmingham has been working with NHS Direct and Pfizer on the ‘Birmingham OwnHealth’ project and Croydon has both an excellent service for people who live at home with dementia [old Telecare Alliance paper], and its ‘virtual wards’ service.

The twelve WSDAN members are:

• Barnsley PCT and Barnsley MBC
• Birmingham East and North PCT and Birmingham City Council
• Croydon PCT, Croydon Council, Croydon Voluntary Action and South London and Maudsley NHS Trust
• East Riding of Yorkshire PCT and East Riding of Yorkshire Council
• Hull Teaching PCT and Hull City Council
• Lancashire County Council and Central Lancashire PCT
• Leeds PCT and Leeds City Council
• Leicester City PCT and Leicester City Council
• Lincolnshire Teaching PCT and Lincolnshire County Council
• Norfolk Social Services and NHS Norfolk
• Nottingham City PCT, Nottingham City Council and Brunel University
• Southampton City PCT and Southampton County Council

Let’s hope that being a WSDAN member doesn’t compromise their freedom to publicise their developments in the way it did for the demonstrator sites.

Second, the WSDAN newsletter contains a link to an article that goes into more detail [previous article] about the difficulties around setting up the project and it is probably worth a few minutes of most readers’ time. Whether that can be said of the accompanying PowerPoint slides you can download, is another matter. They may be stuffed full of useful data, but if that’s what comprised the presentation at the TSA conference I’m glad I didn’t sit through them.

Hard on the heels of the WSDAN November newsletter came the CSIP November Telecare eNewsletter with the eagerly anticipated round-up of the analysis of the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) data from the 150 social care authorities on their progress relating to the Preventative Technology Grant (PTG) implementation concerning the numbers of people aged 65 and over receiving one or more items of telecare, and the expenditure on infrastructure, equipment and services.

Here is a link to the main webpage for those analyses, but I’d say it is essential to read the e-Newsletter item first for the context, the caveats and explanation of how to use the Excel spreadsheets.

As this is the last telecare eNewsletter under the CSIP brand, I’d like to say ‘thank you’ to Mike Clark for the hard work that he has put into their, and their predecessors’, production for over three years. Without Mike’s scrupulous attention to detail and patience with horrendous data, we would all be much less well informed.

The London Telecare Group and JCA Design have produced a new poster that, with generous support from the Adshel and ClearChannel advertising agencies, will be displayed in several thousand London locations. London-based telecare services are also encouraged to order A3 or A4 posters tailored with their own local call centre details.

©2008 JCA/London Telecare Ltd

At last Tunstall’s flirting with Medical Intelligence Technologies (Columba Bracelet and Vega GPS Bracelet for people with Alzheimer’s) is over and it has been announced that it is going to market the Vega bracelet in the UK.

According to this MI press release, as part of Tunstall’s testing programme some of its employees daily acted the part of people with dementia to test the Vega’s features. So it appears that Tunstall’s ability to inspire cult-like devotion amongst its employees continues to flourish. What’s the secret? A rendition of the company song or group hugs to begin each morning?

Joking apart, this is serious news for Tunstall’s competitors as the bracelet looks like a good product despite its slightly disturbing name (shades of ‘vague’ - never mind all that ’stellar’ guff on the website). Furthermore, Tunstall’s marketing machine is already in full swing to snatch a dominant position in the Alzheimer’s market niche, and not just in the UK. Its recently launched multi-lingual website www.alzheimers-support.com employs just about every known web design trick to keep visitors on the site and, in the guise of offering information, to present them with Tunstall products exclusively.

Medical Intelligence Technologies Vega page.

In an item on the South East Health Technologies Alliance (SEHTA) website, UK telecare expert Dr Richard Curry asks if he is worrying unnecessarily about whether telecare delivery can be scaled up to meet the targets that have been set without compromising the quality of service that users have come to expect. Read the article by David Burke that his question introduces, and decide for yourself.

According to its press release, AlarmForce Industries Inc is Canada’s largest manufacturer and installer of two-way voice home alarm systems and line-cut protection facility, with a subscriber base of over 150,000 in Canada and some US states. It has now entered the personal emergency response system (PERS) market with a pendant panic alarm offering. The press release implies that this is a company-developed product rather than someone else’s re-branded. If so, let’s hope they have covered their backs from keen patent-infringement hunter Honeywell.

Cumbria-based Alston Healthcare is a tiny ’social enterprise’ company that has already challenged and supported its local healthcare providers to make more use of information technology and is now pushing at the door of telehealth with a small project. Pity its funding is so precarious. Story from e-Health Insider Primary Care.

Chubb Community Care is taking ‘Telecare and Telehealth’ on the road in a series of events in England, Scotland and Wales during September and October. The events will be an opportunity to find out more about Chubb’s latest developments for falls prevention and provide delegates with networking opportunities with people who have already gone through the process of providing a full telecare and telehealth service.

See Chubb’s website for dates and details or contact Barbara Mathews on 01254 688 548.

You would expect the much-heralded final report of Lord Darzi’s NHS Next Stage Review High Quality Care for All published yesterday to be hot on the introduction of health monitoring technologies in people’s homes. It’s not. Searching, I found just a few references on pages 20 and 29. The Long Term Conditions Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) Programme as such doesn’t get a mention (what a surprise!) but the part of the programme in Cornwall does. Download the Darzi report here.

Danish wireless products developer RTX Telecom has agreed to sell its telehealth unit to an unnamed “world leading telehealth solutions provider”. Story here.

Since virtually all company press releases begin with the phrase “CompanyX is the world’s leading telewhatever solutions provider”, thus rendering it meaningless, your speculation as to who has bought it is as good as mine.

Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault have implications for telehealth monitoring, as the following item from E-Health Insider Primary Care, indicates. If I were a UK telehealth supplier I’d be wanting to talk to EMIS and INPS. EMIS and INPS plan integrated IT system.

So, thanks to e-CareManagement for the tip-off on this item from NursingDegree.net The Ultimate Guide to Google Health: 60+ Tips and Resources

And, while on the subject of health records on line was also raised in The Times recently. The GP involved stressed it changes doctor-patient relationship for the better.

Manchester-based company SmartLife Technology is focusing on the US market for its HealthVest product as part of plans to increase sales to more than £10m by 2012. According to SmartLife’s press release, “There has been interest from across the UK, but I’m currently spending most of my time speaking to organisations in North America.” Sounds like a sensible move given the lamentable state of remote monitoring readiness in the UK.

Read the press release and explore the site. It is interesting that they have identified emergency workers and military personnel as a large potential market for the vest and it is easier to see that taking off than the health applications.

First Telecare Aware story on sensors in clothing was over two years ago: SmartShirt system launched by Sensatex

For general information on the ’smart clothes’ scene, try Talk2MyShirt.com.

An interesting story on the use of information on MP3 players for people with asthma to listen to when an attack threatens. However, is calling it ‘Telecare for Asthma’ stretching the definition of telecare too far? Do leave a comment on the terminology.

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