The difficulty in differentiating telemedicine and telehealth

June 15, 2016 | by

Our Editors have always tried to cleanly define the differences between telemedicine, telehealth and telecare, even as they blur in industry use. (See our Definitions sidebar for the latter two.) But telemedicine, at least on this side of the Atlantic, has lost linguistic ground to telehealth, which has become the umbrella term that eHealth wanted to be only two or three years ago. Similarly, digital health, connected health and mHealth have lost ground to health tech, since most devices now connect and incorporate mobility. And there are sub-genres, such as wearables, fitness trackers and aging tech.

Poor telehealth grows ever fuzzier emanations and penumbra! Now bearing the burden of virtual visits between doctor and patient, doctor-to-doctor professional consults, video conferencing (synchronous and asynchronous), remote patient monitoring of vital signs and qualitative information (ditto), and distance health monitoring to treat patients, it also begins to embrace its data: outcome-based analytics, population health and care modeling. Eric Wicklund accumulates a pile of studies from initial-heavy organizations: WHO, HIMSS, HHS, Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP), ATA, TRC Network. All of which shows, perhaps contrary to Mr Wicklund’s intentions, how confusing simple concepts have become. mHealth Intelligence

Tunstall’s Innovation Centre virtual tour

June 8, 2016 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Big-T-thumb-480×294-55535.gif” thumb_width=”150″ /]Tunstall Healthcare Group’s release for 1 June’s Telecare Awareness Day was a virtual tour of their Innovation Centre physically located at their Whitley, Yorkshire head office. It’s divided into five TECS-related ‘zones’: integrated care, connected home, development room, app bar and workshop. There are explanatory comments below, which help because the virtual tour has a measure of clunkiness. The marketing purpose of the Innovation Centre? It “provides a unique, dedicated space to define the challenge and help accelerate the development and design process to evolve the next generation of digital connected healthcare, create new innovations and service models that genuinely meet the needs of commissioners and consumers.” (Whew!) It’s also kind of a cool space to get feedback from customers, users and partners, which this Editor suspects is the real reason why it was developed. But overall, both the Centre and the virtual tour are good ‘showcase’ ideas that demonstrate both product and thought leadership.

Telecare Awareness Day (UK) – June 1st 2016

May 30, 2016 | by

This Wednesday, June 1st, is National Telecare Awareness Day in the UK for 2016. This is promoted by the industry body [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/UKTelehealthcare-Awareness.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]UK Telehealthcare.

To mark the day, CAIR, the UK based telecare products supply company, is holding an event at their headquarters in West Yorkshire. According to information available from the Telecare Services Association, twelve of the region’s leading voices in Telecare will gather to “tackle some of the challenges facing the industry”.

Last year several activities took place to mark the day, then called National Telehealthcare Awareness Day, with events being held by CAIR, University of East Anglia’s Norwich Electronic Assistive Technology Centre (NEAT), Welbeing (an independent-living service provider) and many others.

A summary of last year’s events is available via the UK Telehealthcare website here.

Abstracts for Med-e-Tel now online

April 5, 2016 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Med-e-tel-logo.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Med-e-Tel Luxembourg, one of the longest continuously running health tech conferences in Europe (from 2004, certainly enough to qualify it as a Grizzled Pioneer), will be on this week from Wednesday to Friday, but if like this Editor you’ll be unfortunately far, far away, Prof. Maurice Mars, Richard E. Scott and Malina Jordanova of the organizing International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (ISfTeH), have published the speaker abstracts online and free (requiring only registration.) See them here.

The abstract researchers span the globe–Nigeria, Greece, Sweden, Czech Republic, Brazil, New Jersey (!)…plus several from UK (including Malcolm Fisk), Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, South Africa and Bulgaria. Orange Labs will present the data of their diabetic bike riders from the 2015 mHealth Grand Tour (MHT)–this was a high point of last November’s mHealth Summit/HIMSS Connected Health [TTA 13 Nov 15]. There’s also research on topics you don’t hear about in most conferences: smart cities, mHealth’s environmental impact, telenursing, adapting eHealth to serve those of differing abilities, even substituting smart technologies for physical restraints. So many unusual views are represented here. Also in this issue, Vol 4 (2016), is a wealth of research from Brazil.

More in the Med-e-Tel update press release.

3rings enters the Dragons’ Den, comes out with strategic investor

March 10, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/steve-purdham-3rings-david-capper-westfield-health-with-3rings-plug.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]About two years ago, we started following 3rings, a Stoke-on-Trent (UK) company that develope an appliance plug that automatically ‘checks in’ an older person based on their morning behavior of turning on a tea kettle, TV or other appliance. We’ve received word from their CEO Steve Purdham that they’ve announced today (Thursday) a substantial strategic investment from not-for-profit insurer Westfield Health. Mr Purdham (picture left) had appeared on the BBC program Dragons’ Den with mum Iris (prominently featured in their ads) to raise £300,000 for a 10 percent share in the company. (For our US readers, Dragons’ Den is similar to Shark Tank or Project Startup.) According to the website release, Westfield Health was attracted to the company through the show, has invested more than twice the funding requested by Mr Purdham from the Dragons, and will be offering the 3rings plug to their current and future customers.

David Capper, their Commercial Director (picture right), acknowledged the attraction of technology in their first major external investment in this type of health tech.  (more…)

Chubb Care System adds communities (UK)

March 4, 2016 | by

Chubb Community Care launched the Chubb Care System at the end of last year [TTA 13 Dec 15], and following up, they have already become the approved technology adviser and provider for the Northern Housing Consortium and the Knowsley Housing Trust’s Bluebell Park Apartments. KHT provides housing for 27,000 residents in Knowsley. The Chubb Care System is a hybrid communication/monitoring system for residents in sheltered and extra care housing to communicate with staff and integrates with TECS, telehealth and fire/safety devices and systems. As Editor Charles put it, some have portrayed Chubb as the weakest of the ‘big three’ telecare providers, and it is heartening to see them move forward quickly.

 

UK Telehealthcare’s London MarketPlace

March 2, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/UKtelehealthcare.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]6 April, 10am – 3pm at London Fire Brigade HQ, 169 Union Street, London SE1 0LL  

UK Telehealthcare is organizing its first MarketPlace for 2016 at the LFB to commemorate its 150 years of service to the community. About 30 exhibitors will be presenting the latest in assistive technologies for the home including telecare, sensor-based and safety/alert. Best of all, it is free to professionals in social care, healthcare and security. See PDF attached or contact Gerry Allmark.

 

Cornwall Council to terminate BT outsourcing deal

December 23, 2015 | by

The High Court has ruled that Cornwall Council is within its rights to terminate the multi-million pound [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Cornwall-Council.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]services outsourcing contract with BT because BT “did not provide … the service it had promised to the standard it had promised”.

Cornwall Council welcomed the High Court decision yesterday saying “The judge’s decision confirms the Council’s argument that BT Cornwall had been in material breach of the contract due to their failure to carry out services to the required contractual standards and, therefore, that we were justified in reaching the decision that we were entitled to terminate the contract.

“As a result of this decision, the Council intends to give notice of the contract before Christmas but there will be no immediate change in the arrangements as notice will not take effect until January.”

BT was awarded the 10-year contract in 2013 amid much controversy as was widely reported including here on TTA. (more…)

More Federal expansion of telehealth coverage proposed in Senate (US)

December 9, 2015 | by

The Telehealth Innovation and Improvement Act (Senate Bill 2343), a bipartisan bill to expand Medicare coverage of rural telehealth, was proposed last week by Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Gary Peters of Michigan. It would authorize Health and Human Services (HHS) to test new telehealth programs through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. CMMI would then evaluate new telehealth models on cost, effectiveness and care improvement. Senator Gardner’s intent is to permanently expand rural telehealth. The bill has moved to the Finance committee. Another Senate bill may be proposed before the holiday break by Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz to integrate telemedicine technology into alternative payment programs including Medicaid Advantage, a service of great utility in his state where 70 percent of the population is on one island, Oahu,  and about 30 percent is scattered over four other islands. iHealthBeat, mHealthIntelligence.

Telecare innovator Lively acquired by GreatCall (updated)

December 5, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Lively-sensors-600×327.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]GreatCall, which markets the popular Jitterbug simple phones and ancillary safety/security services (5 Star, mPERS) targeted to older adults, has acquired the assets of home activity personal monitoring system Lively. According to GreatCall’s press release, Lively’s technologies will be integrated into GreatCall products. These include a tastefully designed brace of self-installed in-home motion sensors, which made quite a splash when introduced in 2012, and a fairly stylish mPERS watch introduced last year. From the announcement, it’s easy to deduce that Lively was largely inactive despite partnerships led by Care Innovations: the press release on both Lively and GreatCall’s site was issued from GreatCall only and not joint contact; Lively’s last round of funding was in 2013 (only $7.3 million total, another Series A to B casualty) and there are no Lively employees transitioning to GreatCall for the good reason that there are none left (Mobihealthnews). No word on founder Iggy Fanlo’s next plans save a squib on LinkedIn saying that hardware was hard and his next move would likely be in software. With last year’s sale of AFrame Digital (with no further word from the purchaser) and BeClose now Alarm.com Wellness (not a surprise as it was built on an Alarm.com platform), as we close the year it is further confirmation that it is No Country for Small Players in digital health. Photo: Lively.

Update: Tart take from seasoned Aging Tech business observer Laurie Orlov on Lively’s rise and fall, with additional history. Her POV is that as attractive as Lively’s concept was, its business strategy should give pause to the Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur crowd thinking this is just another kind of direct-to-consumer hardware-service sell, the long payout of any tech in this field and the opposed short time frame of VCs. It’s also not like there haven’t been a few predecessors fallen on the field, either. Aging in place tech firm Lively is out of business – what can we learn?

Big home health win for telehealth confirms trend: must expand services, analytics

December 5, 2015 | by

One of the most logical places for telehealth, remote care management (RCM) and transitional/chronic condition management (TCM/CCM) is with home health providers and post-acute care, yet perennially it has been on the ‘maybe next year’ list for most telehealth providers. That ‘next year’ may be getting a little closer with the news that Intel-GE Care Innovations has inked a multi-year deal (no pilot-itis here) with major (~400 facilities) home health provider Amedisys using their PC/tablet-based Health Harmony platform.

The initial focus is an ambitious one: reducing hospitalizations and ER/ED visits among patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, depression as well as patients who have two or more of these conditions (co-morbidities). The most interesting to this Editor is the parenthetical mention of analyzing ADLs (activities of daily living) with clinical data. Does this imply the engagement of their venerable ADL monitor QuietCare? (It’s something the founding company worked on circa 2006 while this Editor was there; one would think the analytics have advanced since then.) Another aspect is that Care Innovations will manage Amedisys’ complete RCM program from recruiting to logistics, data analytics and application integration services. Business Wire

What this means: Telehealth (and telecare) companies are now increasingly obliged in these big wins to provide a plethora of additional related services. Health care providers demand services beyond the monitoring technology. They want the turnkey package, from nurse evaluations, care coordination/management, to analytics and logistics.This ‘service creep’ implies alliances and mergers to add on to technological monitoring capabilities–and beaucoup financing. (more…)

Telecare: the cost of a failure (updated)

November 24, 2015 | by

The value of a telecare service, typified by the familiar red-button alarms worn round the neck or [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/NHS-Highland-logo.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]wrist and providing the less able to confidently live an independent life is, of course, well known. Telecare also provides a range of unobtrusive wireless sensors that detects possible problems around the home such as a gas hob or tap left on,  smoke from a smouldering sofa where a cigarette may have fallen and so on.

There are many companies around the world providing telecare services. But what if the service suffers an interruption? What needs to be done and what is the cost?

The UK’s NHS in Scotland had to face these questions recently when the telecare service it provides in the Highland Council area suffered a total failure last week. The system had failed for about four hours last Saturday and, although a  backup system existed, that failed to deploy. (more…)

TSA’s International Technology Enabled Care Conference (Wales)

November 6, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/TSA-Event-Site-03_031.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]16-17 November, Celtic Manor Resort Hotel, Newport, South Wales

This Editor notes that the Telecare Services Association will be ‘Inspiring Change and Progress’ in its second annual International TEC conference at the Celtic Manor. The website mentions a host of high profile speakers to give the ‘need to know’ sector picture, with a two day programme packed with stimulating presentations, challenging debates, informative parallel sessions that will include masterclasses and interactive workshops. More information and registration. Chubb Community Care has noted to us that it’s Europe’s largest TEC conference. They will also be featuring at the conference their jewelry-like alert pendant, Onyx, was developed by CAIR of West Yorkshire. It’s also fitted to work with Chubb’s new Care System and CareUnity® assisted living solutions

Chubb also will exhibit its new Chubb Care System, an assisted living solution where Chubb is a single-service provider for installation, service and monitoring, tailoring system features and functionality to the specific requirements of residents. They are at Booth 19.

HIMSS Connected Health Conference/mHealth Summit starts Sunday–save $100

November 6, 2015 | by

Time is short! This Editor will be attending the HIMSS Connected Health Conference this November 8-11 in Washington, DC (actually outside The Puzzle Palace in National Harbor, Maryland). Telehealth & Telecare Aware has been a media partner (disclosure) since the 2009 mHealth Summit. Changes this year include that it is three conferences in one: the original mHealth Summit with the Global mHealth Forum, the new PopHealth Summit (concentrating on health improvement on the community, regional and national level) and the much needed new CyberSecurity Summit.

Attend all three for one registration, including a large Exposition floor and three pavilions for Population Health, Cybersecurity and Games for Health. Also, there are extra co-located and add on events, mainly on Sunday the 8th. The Global mHealth Forum focuses on mobile and connected health in low and middle income countries (LMICs) and is on Wednesday.

The Summit organizers have been kind enough to offer an excellent discount to our readers of $100. When registering, click on the advert (above, right hand side) and use the promotional code TELEHEALTH100 to receive it. (more…)

Scottish Digital Health and Care Week

November 3, 2015 | by

7-11 December, Strathclyde University’s Technology & Innovation Centre, Glasgow

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/digiweek15eps-_2.jpg” thumb_width=”120″ /]This year’s conference theme is “Using innovative technology to enable more integrated, sustainable & person-centered health and care”. It offers the opportunity to learn from across Scotland, the UK and beyond, with a mix of workshops and plenary sessions. Topics include the critical lessons learned when deploying technology enabled services at scale, drawing experiences from telecare, telehealth and eHealth; learning crucial lessons from the experience implementing the UK wide DALLAS programme. Delegates are encouraged to discuss current knowledge base on a range of topics; network with colleagues from across the relevant sectors; and actively consider application to their own practice. There are also multiple events during the week; more information at SCTT’s website. Registration. Hat tip to Mike Clark via Twitter

Primary care ‘virtual health’ could save $10 billion annually: Accenture study

October 20, 2015 | by

A newly-released Accenture study on US primary care estimates that savings of about $10 billion per year in US primary care could be achieved through use of ‘virtual health’, defined as “digital tools such as biometric devices, analytic diagnostic engine and a virtual medical assistant” that would allow much of the work of a typical office visit to be done prior to or separately from the visit, and follow up/check in tools such as video visits/telemedicine which would further offset costs. The cost savings were calculated by Accenture Insight Driven Health as a total of time-per-visit savings of five minutes–when aggregated, $7 billion, $300 million in telemedicine visits, telehealth self-management in diabetes alone $2 billion, health system savings $63 million. This could potentially solve the shortage of US PCPs now projected at 31,000 in the next ten years. Nary a mention of patient care savings, chronic care management or telecare for proactive behavioral home monitoring, however. Accenture release (BusinessWire), Accenture page and paper.