Take two clever people and a personal need to co-ordinate care and communications for family members on different continents and you come up with another new service. The launch press release describes HomeTouch’s founders Dr Jamie Wilson and Daniel Mueller as ‘a former NHS physician’ and ‘an electrical engineer’ respectively. However, their About Us web page reveals that description to be extremely modest. The HomeTouch system is a monthly-fee-based software-as-a-service and has three linked components:

1. a tablet application for older people, with basic services services including messaging, videocall, calendar and photo album
2. a cross-platform (smartphone, desktop) application with dashboard analytics and services for families and carers
3. an ‘intelligent’ server that monitors activity and manages communication between the two applications

At the moment they are offering some free trials – contact them through the HomeTouch website.

Let’s hope they have the funding and the nerve to make a success of it. Anyone with a decent product who is aiming at the ‘children of aging parents’ market that has yet to show any signs of taking off in the UK deserves some success. Ed. Steve

The Department of Health announced at the beginning of January [Sorry I missed it before. Ed Steve], a competition that may be of interest to some of the smaller telecare/telehealth companies. They are encouraging new products and services that will help improve the experience of people with mental health illnesses and people at the end of their life. The deadline for applications is 28 February 2013. Details here.

eHealth Ontario, which has been the subject of a maelstrom of negative publicity for several years owing to its poor management, still continues to cause controversy.:

• Ontario Tories would scrap eHealth, but still develop electronic medical records Canadian Press
• eHealth pays $7 million to settle employees’ class-action lawsuit The Star

This item is an oddity because it is undated and was part of a thesis written for someone’s Master in Laws (LLM) at Cardiff Law School. Although UK- and EU-focused, includes examples from the US and other places and it is a potentially useful reminder of the principles of law relating to the practice of telemedicine and telehealth. It covers topics such as consent, confidentiality and malpractice owing to equipment failure. Most interesting is the final paragraph which points out that once a particular way of working becomes the ‘accepted practice’ then doctors can be negligent if they choose not to use it – and that the adoption of technologies can become widespread quite quickly. Now that has interesting implications for telehealth and its adoption. Emedicine & Telemedicine Law Info.

It’s always been a gripe of ours that the telepresence/telemedicine carts used in hospitals were person-guided and therefore not ‘really worthy’ of being termed robots. However, according to the GizMag item (with video), iRobot receives FDA approval for physician avatar RP-VITA, iRobot “realized that they should not waste the time of either the physician or the hospital staff in guiding the robot around the hospital[so now] the doctor need only click on the location of the next patient to visit, and RP-VITA signals when it has arrived on site.” Oh, and there is that small matter of FDA approval.

Update on the 3ML site: Worcester has issued its Assistive Technology (including telecare and telehealth) Business Case Document.

Despite all the discussion of inexpensive apps turning everyone into ‘quantified selfers’, adoption of tracking technology is still surprisingly slight among those who are already tracking their health indicators and exercise routines. The latest report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project surveying over 3,000 Americans indicates that 69% are already tracking a health condition for themselves or a loved one, but 49% keep the information in their heads (!), 34% use paper and 21% use technology–but that can include Excel and not necessarily an app or device with attached program such as FitBit or a PHR. Among the smartphone users, 19% have downloaded a health app for exercise, diet and weight management. According to Suzannah Fox of Pew, “We’ve been looking at health apps since 2010, and health app uptake has been essentially flat for three years.” and that the low adoption continues to surprise. Most Adults Not Using Technology To Monitor Health (iHealthBeat) Pew Internet release

Should virtual patient-doctor visits (termed here telehealth rather than telemedicine) have taken a page from the US e-commerce model to stimulate adoption? That is, to make them popular, provide an economic advantage over in-person visits? (In the US, online sellers such as Amazon initially grew because purchases largely circumvented state sales taxes, costing less.) Dr. David E. Williams proposes that payers now emulate this economic advantage by charging consumers nothing or very reduced co-pays for online visits, and/or incentivize physicians to move in-person visits to online. Aside from the cross-state licensure and medical records access problems, most payers (other than a few such as the adopters of American Well, and of course the VA) have not included or downplayed online visits in their benefits, perhaps fearing a spike in utilization as Dr. Williams mentions. But the good doctor misses a key factor–that this is not a one-way street, and that the consumer demand hasn’t materialized, despite the additional parallels of saving time and travel, which is why his argument seems to be a ‘past tense’ one. Perhaps virtual visits need to be taken outside payers into a concierge care, worksite, pharmacy clinic (enabled through a kiosk such as HealthSpot Station) or single pay model, maximizing convenience at the time of need. And we should find out why the appeal seems to be lacking–much like health app adoption. What Amazon can teach us about telehealth adoption (HealthBusinessBlog)

The latest, if not the last, word on Cormwall’s telecare and telehealth arrangements with BT: Cornwall council’s privatisation compromise The Guardian.

Firefighters in Australia are testing a new plastic-coated pill that tracks their vital signs while on duty. The EQ02 LifeMonitor capsule (from UK-based company Equivital) contains a thermometer and a small transmitter. Victoria’s Country Fire Authority health and wellbeing officer Peter Langridge told News.com.au: “…There is no set formula for how long a person can fight a fire before they start suffering from heat stress or dehydration and management is the key to protecting our fire fighters.” Ingestible pill monitors firefighter’s vitals to ensure safety. PSFK item. Heads-up thanks to Toni Bunting.

There are indications, with a patent application by Apple for a shoe that uses an embedded sensor to monitor wear [hmm!] that it is thinking about wearable tech for the future – which will inevitably mean at least a foray into health monitoring. Apple Patent Application Tips ‘Smart Shoe’ from PC Magazine.

Thinking about wearable sensors and health starts us down the ‘Quantified Self‘ train of thought. Editor Steve only twigged recently [duh!] that this is an extremely geeky play on words referring not only to measuring one’s activity, but that ‘quantifying’ is something done by ‘quants‘ – “experts in mathematics, physics and computer science who brought sophisticated quantitative approaches to the world of Wall Street”.