Social networking combined with health data tracking

5 minuites. UTS Health

The following website is an interesting concept that points to a possible future for user-controlled health information.

Set up by UTS Health, a subsidiary of software company Indigo Byte Systems (UTS = Universal Tracking System), the site is a combination of user networking/health information sharing/mutual support and health information provided by the company, and a place to track your health monitoring data (privately, if you wish). The best way to grasp it before visiting the UTS website is to view their introductory video:

GE/Intel QuietCare video

2 mins 36 seconds. Title: GE/Intel: A commitment to the future of home healthcare

Excellent, non hyped-up, explanation of how telecare should, and can, work. In this case in an assisted living setting.

The human star of the video is ex-school teacher Honor Hacker who has featured in a number of pro-technology articles, and spoke last year at a briefing of the US Senate’s Special Committee on Aging. It’s good to see she is still going strong. Here are a few of her stories from previous years:

Technology helps seniors live independently. Minnesota Public Radio, December 2005

Silent Guardians. Star Tribune, Minneapolis-St Paul, February 2007

Capitol Hill Briefing Features Technologies That Could Transform the Lives of Seniors. American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, January 2008

Global health presentation

This item is an eye-opener worth 20 minutes of anyone’s time. Apart from that, you may find yourself re-thinking the current potential of the global telehealth market… Professor of Global Health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, Hans Rosling at the TED event in 2006. (More information)

Telecare and telehealth coming together in Norfolk (UK)

…people who know me will anticipate that I have a huge problem with Norfolk’s conflation of ‘assistive technology’ with telecare and telehealth. (See comments on the Terminology Campaign item.)

Let’s get this straight: ‘assistive technology’ is a very broad term for any equipment that helps compensate for some form of functional impairment. Or, as the Foundation for Assistive Technology (FAST) defines it, “Assistive Technology (AT) is any product or service designed to enable independence for disabled and older people.”

A few shots at the beginning of the video imply that they understand this, but it soon slips into referring to the telecare and telehealth as AT. Although can be regarded as a subset of AT, there is no implication that AT has a remote component in any way, which is the key defining characteristic of telecare, telehealth, telemedicine, etc. When I was contracted to work at the Department of Health I frequently reminded civil servants and Ministers not to refer to telecare as ‘assistive technology’ and I thought that eventually the message did get through. At least by the time the Preventative Technology Grant conditions were published. And now it raises its head again…

See also the Telecare Soapbox item re ‘Smart Homes’.

OK, rant over! My thanks to Saneth Wijayaratna of Telemedcare Ltd for alerting me to the video.

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Senator John Thune advocating an increase in funding for telehealth

In this 6½ minute video of US Senator for South Dakota John Thune successfully advocates an increase in funding for telehealth in October 2007. It is interesting to observe his superordinate use of the term ‘telehealth’, with ‘telemedicine’ sometimes seeming to be used interchangeably, and sometimes subordinately to it when contrasted with ‘telehomecare”.

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I’m grateful to Marnee Brick, a speech therapist, for spotting this video. As an ex-speech and language therapist I am delighted to see that she is promoting online therapy. See her site: TinyEYE.

However, I do have a problem with her construction of online speech therapy under ‘telehealth’ in her blog. As I’ve mentioned previously, the terminology issue here is not with ‘tele’. It’s what comes after: is speech therapy is a health or an education-related discipline – or something else? This was a debate going on in the UK from at least the ’60s. She also uses the term ‘telespeech’ and ‘telepractice’.