This 17 minute video will leave you in no doubt why no one has better patient-empowerment credentials than Dave deBronkart, known as e-Patient Dave online. Dave presenting at TEDxMaastricht.

This 4 minute video by the NHS Alliance describes the use of telehealth monitoring in North Somerset. It appears to have been made in November 2010 and is on YouTube but does not seem to be published in context anywhere, even on the websites of the NHS Alliance or of the North Somerset PCT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvzKJp6Aov8

It’s a year since we flagged up the Shimmer wearable sensors [TA 29 Jan 2010] and now we learn that research is being conducted at the Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) Centre on them for monitoring high-intensity exercise. Shimmer was originally developed by Intel Research Labs in 2006 and Shimmer Research was established in 2008 following a worldwide licensing agreement.
Shimmer Provides Real-Time Feedback for Intense Physical Exercise Programme.

Is it just me (Ed. Steve), or does anyone else find that phrases like “Kinematic, Bio-Physical, and Ambient modules – paving the way for the next big wave in computing” get in the way of understanding what may be a significant technology? “Better than the Wii Fit” Dr David McKeown says in the video.

The University of Kansas’s student newspaper The University Daily Kansan carries an interview with Jim Juola, one of their professors, who is working on the European Comission’s project is called K-SERA: Knowledgable Service Robots for the Aging. Professor helps develop robot to help the elderly. There’s a neat comment by someone who says they would rather be cared for by a real robot than by a human taught to behave like one. The project is using the diminutive (60cm) NAO robots from French company Aldebaran, as seen in the following 3 minute video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpE4pL5lIJM

Eric Topol is a consultant cardiologist in the US and an ‘evangelist’ for mobile phone-based remote patient monitoring. This 17 minute video of him speaking at TEDMED illustrating current technologies and trends was released back in February 2010, but just come to our attention. Watch the video on TED site so you can see, and possibly add to, the comments. Eric Topol’s blog.

1. an outline of what telehealth and telecare are (3:24)
2. the areas covered (0:45)
3. benefits (2:03)
4. obstacles (1:25)
5. potential savings (0:40)

Here is the first:

Researchers at MIT aim to push down the cost barrier on mirror-based health monitoring technology, as described in this video.

More details to this pointer to the future on the Gizmag site.

Can patients and doctors communicate electronically? A clever video (2min 30secs, watch it past the midway point) aims to shake up preconceptions. Publicising the ePatient Connections 2011 conference.

In contrast with the Camden short pendant-orientated video [below on Videos Page], Dudley Telecare Service’s 8 minute video is excellent for the philosophy it embodies, the range of devices it covers (including Just Checking’s equipment), and the number of down-to-earth testimonials from users of the service. Excellent soundbites from Linda Sanders, Director of Adult, Community and Housing Services too, especially at the 7:13 spot.

Camden is a council in North London with a population of 236,000. I hear that Camden has done good things on the telecare front…so why does their new one-minute advert for the telecare service concentrate on pendant alarms? Ah, the mysteries of councils’ marketing and communications departments!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV434lorFCA

Not telecare, but this will interest a lot of Telecare Aware readers. RSLSteeper, a well-respected UK company in the assistive technology arena has started to show off its new, sensitive ‘bionic’ hand. BeBionic website. [It’s a pity the site does not render well in Firefox browser.]

In the video below, see the visitor to an exhibition last month use the hand for the first time… and tie his shoelace. (About 3 mins in.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICpnqf8kN6s

If there’s one thing I’d recommend all Telecare Aware readers to do this week it’s to set aside 13 minutes to watch a video from the UK’s Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE – pronounced ‘sky’). It’s not just because SCIE is one of those institutions set up by the previous Government which may not survive changes that will be brought in by the new one, but because the video, entitled Telecare – The ethical debate is excellent. [Note, it autoplays.]

There is an element of ‘looking at both sides’ to it, but the real value, as with the previously mentioned case studies from Newham, is in seeing how the telecare services are being used sensitively in the UK to support people who in previous generations would have been in institutions where everything was done for, and to, them.

If you have a further 10 minutes to watch another video, Telecare – providing more personalised care can be accessed from the Related Videos tab, to the bottom right of the above page. It puts telecare technologies into the general context of assistive technology for older and disabled people. (Readers from the USA will, no doubt, wince when they hear the technologies being referred to as AT&T.)

There is accompanying text and other materials on the SCIE video web page and, linked to the SCIE material, is an article in Community Care this week, Ethical issues in the use of telecare.

Brief but informative news item on NBC affiliate WPTV in South Florida in January 2010, demonstrating Mobile Medical Monitoring‘s one-button mobile alarm.

2 minutes 40 seconds

Telehealth guru Harry Wang, of Parks Associates, does an off-the-cuff interview at the Broadband Properties Summit 28 April 2010.