Here’s one for UK-residents only owing to tech restrictions – unless other readers know how to access it via a UK proxy server – it’s an item on the BBC’s Newsnight programme yesterday (available via the BBC iPlayer for six more days) and it covers various forms of wearable technology. The 15 minute slot beginning at 34 minutes includes a report to demonstrate forms of the technology and a discussion about the associated ethics. The staggering conclusion is that it is awesome technology but we should worry about how the companies that collect data from it will use the information. Newsnight 3 June 2013. Heads up thanks to Mike Clark.
Saypage Telehealth introduced at West Suffolk Hospital (UK)
When this editor worked for the NHS in West Suffolk – long, long ago – my colleagues and I always denied the saying that West Suffolk was ‘the graveyard of ambition’, and we pointed to numerous innovations that we introduced without fanfare into our various fields. So it is pleasing to see that the tradition appears to be continuing. The following press release describes the introduction of a hospital-to-home internet-based video link system to reduce the need for some orthopaedic patients to attend hospital to receive post-operative follow-up consultations. Significantly, it appears to be a development championed by an enthusiastic hospital consultant. We have seen over and over again that technological solutions to care pathway problems work best when they are adopted from the ground up. West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust Launches Virtual Orthopaedics Outpatients Clinic Built On Saypage Telemedicine Platform. (Saypage press release) [Will the people who use the system be counted towards the 3millionlives (3ML) target? Oh! Silly me! No one is counting anything, and it’s an aspiration, not a target!]
Related links: What is Saypage Telehealth? and Saypage User Guide.
Health data advances from England that will be “bigger than the Internet”
MedCityNews reports a speech yesterday by the UK’s Secretary of State for Health at the Health Datapalooza IV conference in Washington DC. If the hype in the headline is enough to make you suspicious, the rest will leave you wondering if Jeremy Hunt is not floating free of reality: Six health data advances from England that will be “bigger than the Internet”.
Telecare: A waste of time or the future of health and social care? (UK)
A longish article on the Building Better Healthcare website (for the building industry) gives a fairly comprehensive overview of the current state of telecare in the UK. It ranges from ‘pendant or chord’ [sic] to ‘buddi’ via the TSA Code of Practice and a number of council examples. It’s probably a reasonable response to ‘What is Telecare?’ for industry outsiders: Special report: Telecare: A waste of time or the future of health and social care?
The Eye has it (UK)
It is not TTA’s own Gimlet Eye that features in this item, but Private Eye “a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine” (Wikipedia) which, in the current issue (1341), picks up again [TTA Nov. 2010] the matter of the North Yorkshire and York (NYY) procurement of Tunstall telehealth equipment and the subsequent writing off of its capital value. The page 31 item does not make it into the highly cut-down online version of the magazine and there is nothing in it with which readers of the Yorkshire Post newspaper or of TTA’s own coverage [March 2013] will be unfamiliar.
Rather surprisingly, Private Eye does not pick up on what should be the matter of most concern for taxpayers – the status of the funds paid to Tunstall under the terms of the contract but for which no goods or services have been called off by the health services. We have not had any indication that these funds have been or will be returned to the public purse and, indeed, we speculate that there may not be a contractual requirement or mechanism to do so any more. However, Tunstall’s directors, being ethical people, surely cannot be comfortable with this situation and it will be interesting to see how they resolve it.
Telehealth makes front page in UK newspaper
Rather to many people’s surprise the popular Daily Express newspaper featured a telehealth story on its front page on Wednesday. It appears to be an extension of the UK’s media’s current interest in the woes of hospital emergency departments and the simplistic ‘blame the GPs’ theme that has been fuelled by recent comments from the Secretary of State for Health. However, the article is positive about telehealth blood pressure monitoring: DIY test will save your life: gadget sends blood pressure results direct to your GP (online version). Interestingly, the article contains no reference to the 3ML initiative. One wag Tweeted “Oh no! I’m rubbish at DIY. I’ll surely fail the test”. Here’s a link to a picture of the front page so that readers can gauge the weight that the item received.
Android app for dementia research and therapy (UK)
Steinkrug, a UK based research and development company has developed an Android app for tablet-based devices that monitors users’ responses to sound and images. The technology has been designed for use in dementia research but has potential for wider applications within and beyond the healthcare sector. Whereas Google Glass looks outwards into the wearer’s environment, Steinkrug’s application tracks the user’s response to media displayed on the device. Press release: Android App For Dementia Research and Therapy.
May Telecare LIN newsletter published (UK)
This edition concentrates on the changing telehealth and telecare context: the publication of the Care Bill in England along with plans to integrate health and social care services over the next five years and the NHS Mandate’s extensive programme of NHS changes until March 2015. Pressures continue on health and care services. These will all have an impact on telecare, telehealth and digital health implementation. In the meantime, Scotland is just getting on with its programme… May newsletter (PDF) News listings/links supplement (PDF).
CUHTec: New courses (UK)
Various dates, Newcastle University
CUHTec has announced three new telecare strategy courses for managers and commissioners and another for operational staff. Further details here.
UK North West Telecare Event: Call to suppliers
3 September 2013, Salford City Stadium
Being organised for the North West’s council and housing providers’ telecare services by Dawn Thornber of Contour Homes, this free-for-attendees event will be a low-cost opportunity for suppliers to showcase their latest products to people who do not normally attend national events. It is also likely to generate good local publicity. Hazel Blears (MP and all-party representative on dementia) will be the guest speaker and any surplus from the event will be donated to a dementia charity. Suppliers who would like to be involved please email Dawn.
Med ePad patient-centred care for prostate cancer patients (Wales)
We said that Med ePad was ‘one to watch’ for forthcoming developments back in February. Here’s the first: the Med ePad Prostate Clinic App is being tried at the prostate clinic of Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board. The app is designed to inform, support and involve patients throughout the diagnosis and treatment for their prostate problems. By providing better information from the point of referral onwards, it is expected that patients will be better informed about their condition and about the treatment options available during their consultations. Other integral functions of the app include appointment and medications reminders; clinically driven and patient-specific visual representation of the care pathway; full graphical audio/visual animations; clinician/patient video interaction and configurable real time surveys. Med ePad website.
3millionlives Working Group officer elections (UK)
Angela Single, of BT, has been re-elected as chair, and Ileana Welte, of Bosch UK, elected vice-chair of the 3millionlives (3ML) industry working group. Press release (PDF)
Ambivalence over end of life decisions (Europe)
Not telehealth or telecare directly, but relevant to many TTA readers, a new Europe-wide research findings from the King’s College London’s Cicely Saunders Institute and Project BuildCARE explores people’s preferences when it comes to decision-making at the end of life. Dr Daveson, lead author of the paper, said that when thinking about scenarios of lost capacity, for example, most people in Europe do not want to make decisions about their healthcare in advance. Some people decide not to make end of life decisions about their care before they absolutely have to because:
- They believe that they will not know what they will want to choose until they are in the situation
- It is easier not to think about it
- They think that avoiding making decisions beforehand will avoid burdening family members
However, 53% of survey respondents wanted their partner or spouse to be involved in helping them make their decision and 40% also wanted other relatives to be involved. This means that for many people these will be family decisions. Preferences for self-involvement in decision-making – new research findings from across Europe: What would you choose? KCL main site. Infographic (PDF download)
When mHealth becomes just Health (US)
Success In mHealth: Shifting Focus From The ‘m’ To The ‘Health’ (Forbes) is an interesting but curiously upside-down article, by which I mean that it would have more immediate appeal if it started with the final section When mHealth becomes just Health before unleashing the statistics. The author is Dr Alain Labrique, founding director of the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative.
Thai mHealth program to transform the health system
The application, Saraphi Health, and the mhealth project of which it is a critical element, receives funding from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation. The purpose is to be able to build a digital archive to be used by the managers and developers of public healthcare policy. The aim is to improve the efficiency of dealing with urgent health situations. Mhealth program in Thailand uses app to collect medical data. MobileCommerceNews.
Specialist housing does not reflect what most older people want (UK)
A thoughtful article in The Guardian by Aleks Collingwood of The Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlights the disincentives that exist at present in the widely-assumed-to-be-desirable downsizing of accommodation by older people to meet their own needs better and to make more efficient use of their larger houses by other families. Among the points made, “There’s a negative framing of the debate – downsizing emphasises loss of status and reduced importance. To interest more people in moving there not only has to be a wider and more attractive choice of housing options, but we need to think carefully how these options are labelled.” Read the comments too: It’s time for a new model of specialist housing for older people.
At least it is several centuries since older people in the UK, unlike their counterparts in Ghana, faced being ostracised as witches. Older people are wrongly accused of witchcraft (GhanaWeb) although one wonders if the underlying impulse to isolate older people from the mainstream of society is not actually the same.
UPDATE 11 June: It seems appropriate to add here an article about housing for older people by Malcolm Fisk, published a few weeks ago: Old age debate (in Inside Housing. See the comments, too “…the disservice we have ‘done to’ many older people by shrinking their lives … to a flat, to a room, to a chair, to a purse / wallet, to a photo.”)
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