In this blog item the author rants most engagingly that many healthcare organisations are rushing into technological areas that they do not understand. He is responding (approvingly) to a recent US Joint Commission’s Sentinel Events Alert on HIT that challenges the dominant paradigm of health IT as an easy-to-accomplish panacea.

He raises thought-provoking matters that apply equally to the introduction of telehealth as any other healthcare technology. Read it here.

Adam Vincent, Caitlin M Cusack, Eric Pan, Julie M. Hook, David C. Kaelber and Blackford Middleton from Partners Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School produced a one-page conference poster for the AMIA 2007 Symposium suggesting a taxonomy for telehealth. This is an interesting and useful contribution to the debate about terminology. View/download ‘A New Taxonomy for Telehealth Technologies‘.

They suggest that four factors need to be taken into account and that they will “allow for the inclusion of future telehealth endeavors”. They are (and I have paraphrased for simplicity here): Type of Interaction; Location of Controlling Medical Authority; Real-time care, and whether the data is used in ’store and forward’ mode.

This would be fine if it were not for the medico-centric nature of the model. (Mind you, I quite like the Larsonesque idea of some of the doctors being on the ‘far side’.) The world is changing and, as this WSDAN article by Nick Goodwin points out, patients will start to take more control. I think that will be especially true when Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault take hold and home-based telehealth monitoring becomes as ubiquitous as mobile phones.

Thanks to Frank Wartena of Philips Research Europe for pointing out the poster.

Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of this story. The introduction reads:

“The University System of Ohio is soon to be a global hub for online medical education and videoconferencing following a decision to fund the creation of a resource center in Columbus. The Ohio Telehealth Video Resource Center will establish Ohio as a center of excellence worldwide in videoconferencing technologies and, at the same time, contribute to the improved health and well-being of countless people throughout world,” said Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.

If it its true that this Center can become what it says it will, great. A new star is born. But why does my gut instinct tell me that the reality will be different? Perhaps it is because I have observed that when doctors, academics and politicians get together it is hype, not a star, that is born. Or perhaps it is because the world is a bigger place than people tend to imagine? Read the story and then, if you know the telemed scene, leave a comment to tell me whether my gut feeling is accurate or not.

Item for the techies – in case they haven’t read it already. Eliminating Medical Device RF Interference

A quick reminder that if you wish to present at next April’s Med-e-Tel conference the deadline for papers is 20th December. Submission details here.

This Guardian article, reporting on Edinburgh following Croydon’s example of setting up ‘virtual wards’ of people being cared for at home, is slow to get going but read on to where it gets into some of the detail. It’s a service that arises from a distinctly different culture to the ‘Doctor will see you now’ item below this. Read it here. And oh, someone has just realised the model could be applied to social care…

[Additional information following the above post, this month's sponsor, Project E-vita, pointed out that a client of theirs, Medihome, has been providing this kind of service for some NHS hospitals in London and South East England for a number of years. The NHS Department of Innovation and Improvement made a video about Medihome and Project E-vita as an example of an innovative way of delivering care to people. Medihome use the Project E-vita system to collect data about patients in their own home using MACIC, a PDA-based system that synchronises with the master record held on Project E-vita. Hospital consultants can then access patients' records and monitor their progress. Nurses even take images of wounds healing and upload these for observation. Medihome provides two distinct services to NHS hospitals: 'early discharge', saving costs on hospital occupancy, and an 'alternative admission' service where patients that might be admitted through the emergency department are intercepted and assessed for treatment in their own home.

There are three excellent videos showing the system in use that are accessible from the Medihome home page.

Websites: Medihome and Project Evita]

From 1 January 2009, eligible originating sites for payment of telehealth services will include hospital-based or critical access hospital-based renal dialysis facilities (including satellites), skilled nursing facilities and community mental health centers. Details here.

Earlier this month the EU Commission issued a document: Communication on telemedicine for the benefit of patients, healthcare systems and society. It’s not as dry as you might expect and covers:

• Definition of telemedicine
• Telemonitoring
• Making it happen (including, helpfully, a discussion of the need for legal clarity)
• Recommended actions for the next three years for member states and the Commission

Download it here. (Scroll down – the front page just says ‘EN’)

Thanks to Telecare Aware reader Tom Jones of Tanjent Consultancy for the heads up on this item.

What is it with doctors who seem to want to make mechanical copies of themselves? A search for ‘robot’ in the above search box will throw up a few examples. Here’s another, from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Online Health.

A school in Knoxville, Tennessee, has installed telemedicine equipment to improve the service the nurse can provide. Here is a news item from WBIR.

Written item and video: New technology lets kids see doctor without leaving school

Thanks to Bob Pyke Jr. for the heads-up on this item.

Audio report on a brainstorming session at Kaiser Permanente’s Innovative Learning Network conference. Worth the six-and-a-half minutes it will take you to listen to it.

Mention of the Nintendo Wii Fit in the report reminds me that we had a news round-up item on this in April: Wiimarkable: Can it evolve into a telehealth device? And I think the answer to that question is becoming clearer: it can, through the games box acting as a hub. It would also reduce the ‘boredom factor’ that must set in if you have to make and report ‘vital signs’ every day.

New. British standard of interest to device manufacturers. Here.

Telecare Aware readers not attending the TSA conference can access press releases and other conference-related information provided by exhibitors by visiting this page.

Telecare Aware readers not attending the TSA conference can access press releases and other conference-related information provided by exhibitors by visiting this page. More information may be added over the next few days.

Back in September, unnoticed by most people outside of Africa, the Society for Telemedicine and eHealth in Nigeria hosted the second 2-day Pan African Conference on Telemedicine and eHealth (PACTe). The theme was ‘eHealth in Low Resource Settings’. In view of the general economic picture perhaps this is something we should all be thinking about these days.

Generously, the organisers have now made a 125 page conference report freely available, containing much information from the various lectures and presentations. The contents are too long to list here, but can be viewed or downloaded here. Download the full PACTe 2008 report here (2.3Mb pdf). You may, in particular, want to see the sections on the benefits of free, open source software for ehealth.

By the way, the Society for Telemedicine and eHealth in Nigeria is a member (like CST and UKeHA mentioned in a recent Telecare Aware story) of the Swiss-based International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth.