Tender alert: London Hillingdon 24/7 telecare monitoring (due 5 May!)

April 5, 2017 | by

Our Eye on Tenders, Susanne Woodman, has located a just-published telecare tender for the London Borough of Hillingdon UB8 1UW.

Description: The London Borough of Hillingdon (the Council) is inviting tenders from suitably experienced organisations capable of providing a Telecare emergency alarm system and 24- hour telephone support for the Council (the Services).

The specification is split across two service requirements;
A. Social Alarm and telecare 24/7 monitoring services;
B. Provision of an out of hours emergency answering service.

The London Borough of Hillingdon (the Council) currently operates 21 sheltered housing developments across the borough, consisting of 838 units. All sheltered housing accommodation is connected to the current Telecare call handling system provided by Jontek.

The current system is monitored by Council staff 24/7; this would switch 24/7 monitoring to an outside sole contractor. It is a three-year contract starting 1 September and ending 31 August 2020, with an extension of one year. The estimated value is £1.5m.

Application deadline is 5 May. More information is on the Gov.UK Contracts Finder page.

Welbeing’s expansion on BBC Norfolk, Tunstall’s #MarysVIPHome Christmas (UK)

January 4, 2017 | by

We start the New Year off we hope in the right way with some good news on telecare expansion and media coverage, traditional and social, versus the gloominess that dominated 2016.

Welbeing, which has become one of the larger telecare providers in the UK from its Eastbourne and Wealden Council roots, was the subject of a feature on Nick Conrad’s breakfast show on BBC Radio Norfolk. This focused on their East Anglia expansion to 4,500 new customers acquired from Flagship Home, with phone-ins by an operator from their new call center in Dereham, a local Welbeing customer and a representative from Norfolk County Council. Welbeing has been on a recent tear with acquisitions in East Sussex, Cumbria, Stonewater and with Muir Housing, cresting their total users to more than 70,000. Of late there’s been a lot of downbeat feelings about the fate of telecare in the UK, so it’s refreshing to hear an upbeat local story for a change. News release. Hat tip to Charlene Saunders, marketing manager of Welbeing. 

Tunstall in UK has also developed a smart home type test bed in a sheltered housing flat to showcase how existing TECS kit, Tunstall’s and others, can be combined in everyday living. Smart home demos to interested parties may be old news, but Tunstall is cleverly using social media marketing to build it up. It’s hashtagged #MarysVIPHome with updates on Twitter. There are also has five demo videos on YouTube which show how a family can observe activity/ADLs without intrusion, plus connect the resident to care, improve their socialization and remotely control the home environment. This Editor saw it on a LinkedIn post before the holidays from Tunstall’s Adrian Scaife thanking their visitors and wishing us a Mary Christmas. Now we hope to see more of a narrative about a real Mary living there and using all that TECS. It’s a nice start to what we hope is an innovative 2017.