This year’s Telemedicine & eHealth conference, on 25th & 26th November, at the Royal Society of Medicine at 1 Wimpole St, London will focus on how technology can help people to age well. It will cover a wide palette of issues relating to technology and ageing, including both physical & mental conditions, and the importance of social & spiritual considerations too.
Keynote speakers include Jon Rouse (more…)
August ended with the report of the second highest-ever identity breach traced to a healthcare provider–4 million patient names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and clinical information, contained on four unencrypted Advocate Health System (Illinois) office computers. It was a ‘behemoth breach’ in Healthcare IT News‘ words and has led to the filing of a class-action lawsuit (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse). Now security consultant Ponemon Institute’s latest report, released yesterday, increases the breach anxiety level with its 2013 Survey on Medical Identity Theft: (more…)
14-15 November 2013, Hilton New York, New York City
This year’s NYeC Digital Health Conference brings together a diverse group of professionals for two days of lively intellectual exchange. Healthcare providers, IT innovators, health leadership, start-ups, hospital officials, group practice managers, investors, and entrepreneurs will gather to hear insights, ideas, and analysis from leaders in the health IT community. Early Bird discount expires 20 September. Information, registration
The shots over the bow were in 2012: Bosch’s February lawsuits against Waldo Health, ExpressMD/Authentidate and MedApps (now Alere Connect) [TTA 16 Feb 2012] and then the strange practice of PHR developer/patent accumulator MMRGlobal [TTA 23 Oct 2012] in sending hundreds, perhaps thousands, of letters out to EHR/EMR users to advise them of possible patent violations and demanding licensing. This Editor observed then and during the spring this year that it was only a matter of time that NPEs would pounce on healthcare tech as investment action accelerated. Yet discussions by this Editor with companies in some public venues indicated a certain level of obliviousness to the threat–that there were not enough assets to go after, thus healthcare startups made poor targets–though side conversations with IP specialist attorneys indicated otherwise.
Well, the trolls have reared their fuzzy heads again, uglier than ever, in this drama-laced article in Wired. (more…)
Is the disruption in healthcare that we think is going on, have been told is going on, make assumptions on, not really on? This is the contrarian argument posited by Dan Munro:
This year’s Southern Institute for Health Informatics (SIHI) conference, in Portsmouth on September 11th, was a hugely impressive event featuring a well-chosen array of excellent speakers. As one who has often struggled to get excited about the finer points of coding, this was a revelation: I was converted.
Just what can be achieved in the NHS when technology, culture and organisation are in harmony was breathtaking (more…)
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Doro-Liberto-810.jpg” thumb_width=”100″ /]Doro’s unveiling of their second smartphone, the Doro Liberto 810, along with its ‘privileged access’ to two Withings devices–the Smart Body Analyzer (weight, body fat, heart rate) and Pulse Smart Activity Tracker–continues their moves into older adult-appealing mobile telecare/telehealth offerings, as tracked by founding Editor Steve since at least 2009. Doro’s assertive move into Quantified Selfing as part of what they call ‘the world’s most liberating smartphone’, is more fully featured and was predicted by David Doherty earlier this year [TTA 25 Feb]. It is also not Doro’s first big alliance; late last year, Bosch Healthcare announced that Doro would be the mobile platform for telecare offerings in Germany and Sweden [TTA 16 Nov 2012]. Both the release and Mobihealthnews indicate that this offering will roll out to select European markets initially, but the latter states that a similar offering will debut in the US by early 2014. (For US readers, Doro is equivalent to GreatCall’s Jitterbug line) According to Mobile, the Liberto will be available in the UK in October.
26-27 June 2014, Hilton Hotel, Sydney, Australia
This annual international conference on changing the care models around dementia, possibly the only one focused solely on this topic, discusses two questions which telehealth and telecare can answer at least in part: How do we support people with dementia to live their lives well? Are we really delivering care that is personal to the person with dementia and their carer? Call for papers closes 18 October 2013 (video on submitting here) and registration for the conference opens 2 December. Organized by The Dementia Centre, HammondCare-An Independent Christian Charity and the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. More information.
Another factoid from the M&M report: Mobile apps alone by 2018 will be valued at $20.7 billion from $6.3 billion now. Yet 90 percent are currently free and the rest are $1-2, except for medical apps targeted to professionals. The Gimlet Eye is still trying to compute this one in Monopoly® money, and is requesting a large bottle of Panadol (Tylenol). Drug Store News
* Lagniappe: something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure (Merriam-Webster)–American French by way of New Orleans **D3H=Digital Health Hypester Horde
There’s a bit of a boomlet in baby monitoring products, with Mobihealthnews lining up the Rest Devices’ Mimo onesie plus ‘turtle’ monitor, Croatia’s iDerma Teddy the Guardian teddy bear [TTA 22 July], Pixie Scientific’s Smart Diapers which not only detects wetting but also UTIs or kidney problems and the simpler Huggies Tweet Pee that alerts to changing (and reminds to buy diapers) which is in test in Brazil but reportedly will launch this month. Baby showers and their concomitant oohing and aahhing will never be the same. 6 baby activity trackers announced this summer
A survey of 2069 adults in the UK by YouGov, commissioned by charity Carers UK and supported by Tunstall Healthcare (UK), makes a strong case for the better promotion of telehealth & telecare, as we argued for in our recent post on the future of 3millionlives.
The Carers UK report, Potential for Change: Transforming public awareness and demand for health and care technology, draws an intriguing contrast between (more…)
This Vitaphone item does a most creditable job of getting behind the common misperception, covered in previous posts, that people don’t take medicines because they forget.
For me it doesn’t however address the issue of beliefs quite strongly enough though. To give an extreme example, when I worked in Newham there were people who believed that illnesses were supernaturally visited on them because of things their forefathers had done. To expiate those things, they had to suffer stoically. The end result was that, even when diagnosed, medication prescribed and lifestyle advice given, some patients allowed eminently treatable conditions such as diabetes to deteriorate rapidly, unless those beliefs were addressed effectively.
Neil Versel’s first major national magazine story just appeared in US News & World Report on the always engaging topic of…patient engagement. He explains to a general audience how healthcare reform might not change individuals’ behavior right away, but surely it is changing providers’ behaviors in relating to and engaging their patients. It covers EHRs, PHRs, online communications, aging in place, social networking and even doctors speaking with patients in understandable language. Well, Neil certainly does get it….it’s a clear article which we hope will be one of many written by Neil for a general audience. He is also speaking Tuesday at ATA’s Fall Forum in Toronto. Helping Patients Stay Engaged in their Own Care
Engaging patients (sideways?) is a new partnership announced by Bosch Healthcare and New York-based Remedy Health Media to add web-based solutions to its current health management programs delivered through their Health Buddy and T400 devices. The release and coverage (Mass Device, mHealth News) implies that monitoring will part of the patient engagement with “a suite of innovative web-based products for remote patient monitoring” available later this year. Does it mean that the hubs are on their way to the scrapheap? Hat tip to reader Bob Pyke.
9-10 October 2013, Hyatt Dulles Hotel, Herndon VA
The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have organized a conference on improving the safety and effectiveness of medical technologies used in homes and other nonclinical settings, such as telehealth and mHealth. There are risks and challenges to consider as technology is placed in nonclinical environments, in the hands of individuals who are not medical professionals. There is an impressive roster of supporting international organizations, including the British Standards Institution (BSI), the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance (WLSA), the Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) of LeadingAge, The Joint Commission and Continua Health Alliance. Information, agenda, registration. Hat tip to reader Rob Turpin of BSI Standards Limited.
This event will take place on 8 October 2013, 11:15 – 13:00 h at Thon Hotel EU, Rue de la Loi, 75, 1040 Brussels as part of the OPEN DAYS – 11th European Week of Regions and Cities event which runs from 7-10 October 2013 (Open Days Workshop Code 08C10).
It is co-organised by EHTEL and hosted by the Renewing Health Regional Partnership. The workshop will showcase outcomes and lessons learned from care provided to 7000 patients who are part of the Renewing Health pilots and is “intended to start a fruitful debate with all European stakeholders on the routine use of telemedicine services”.
Register for free here (capacity is limited so best to book early).
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