Telecare Aware

This post continues the focus on the terminology problems.

Watch this 6½ minute video of US Senator for South Dakota John Thune advocating (successfully) an increase in funding for telehealth in October 2007. It is interesting to observe his superordinate use of the term ‘telehealth’, with ‘telemedicine’ sometimes seeming to be used interchangeably, and sometimes subordinately to it when contrasted with ‘telehomecare”.

I’m grateful to Marnee Brick, a speech therapist, for spotting this video. As an ex-speech and language therapist I am delighted to see that she is promoting online therapy. See her site: TinyEYE.

However, I do have a problem with her construction of online speech therapy under ‘telehealth’ in her blog. As I’ve mentioned previously, the terminology issue here is not with ‘tele’. It’s what comes after: is speech therapy is a health or an education-related discipline - or something else? This was a debate going on in the UK from at least the ’60s. She also uses the term ‘telespeech’ and ‘telepractice’.

Ascom is perfectly entitled to name its nurse call system anything it wants. But does it fit within the range of your construct of ‘telecare’? It doesn’t sit comfortably in mine. Read their Ascom Telecare IP - Nurse Call System information and leave a comment if you want to react.

United Response, a UK charity supporting people with learning disabilities and mental health problems, terms its use of telecare equipment ‘telesupport’. Is this a reasonable, or even a useful, coining, maybe?