Sign up for our weekly alerts emails - the easiest way to keep up to date!
CUHTec have announced new ‘early bird’ booking fees of £195 for CUHTec Strategy Courses for managers and commissioners and £95 for the CUHTec Training Courses for operational staff. Further details of the four Strategy Courses and one Training Course currently advertised can be found at http://www.cuhtec.org.uk/courses/.
Find current jobs in the telehealth and telecare fields with our job search partner Jooble.
Editor in Chief:
Donna Cusano (See articles)
Contributing Editors:
Charles Lowe (See articles)
Chrys Meewella (See articles)
Founder: Steve Hards
Telehealth and Telecare Aware posts pointers to a broad range of news items. Authors of those items often use terms 'telecare' and telehealth' in inventive and idiosyncratic ways. Telecare Aware's editors can generally live with that variation. However, when we use these terms we usually mean:
• Telecare: from simple personal alarms (AKA pendant/panic/medical/social alarms, PERS, and so on) through to smart homes that focus on alerts for risk including, for example: falls; smoke; changes in daily activity patterns and 'wandering'. Telecare may also be used to confirm that someone is safe and to prompt them to take medication. The alert generates an appropriate response to the situation allowing someone to live more independently and confidently in their own home for longer.
• Telehealth: as in remote vital signs monitoring. Vital signs of patients with long term conditions are measured daily by devices at home and the data sent to a monitoring centre for response by a nurse or doctor if they fall outside predetermined norms. Telehealth has been shown to replace routine trips for check-ups; to speed interventions when health deteriorates, and to reduce stress by educating patients about their condition.
Telecare Aware's editors concentrate on what we perceive to be significant events and technological and other developments in telecare and telehealth. We make no apology for being independent and opinionated or for trying to be interesting rather than comprehensive.
While editor Steve might feel that the reduced course fees are an important development for organisations that wish to improve their understanding of key issues, and the skills of their staff in planning or delivering high quality services, I would suggest that there is another more important news item to report. This is the fact that membership fees (previously £200 per annum) have been abolished while the frequency of free Regional Telecare Forum events has increased to 3 per annum for each region. Why wouldn’t a local authority, RSL, Dom care company, CCG, Mental Health Trust, Community Care provider or individual health, social care or housing professional, or supplier of telecare equipment or services not want to join?
Good point, Kevin, thanks.
I wonder if these moves by CUHTec will threaten the position of the TSA. Hard pressed local authorities will surely think twice before spending over a thousand pounds a year on an organisation that seems so out of touch with its members. But how can CUHTec afford to drop its membership fee even for suppliers AND reduce the course fees? Where’s the catch?
The only catch I can see is you get the benefit of a wider participation in some excellent courses.
Regardless of how good the course material and the presenters are (and I haven’t been paid to say that they are at CUHTec!), it is often the participants that make or break a training course – either through active discussion during the sessions or networking during breaks.
If membership fees prevent people attending in the current economic climate then everyone loses out. Far more realistic to charge a reasonable course fee that clearly is relative to the costs incurred in hosting the group and get a good cross section of delegates. Well done CUHTec.