Telecare Aware has moved – see below

Link to Med-e-Tel’s current Telemedicine and eHealth Directory (PDF 2.4mb)

With the new Stanford University Network for Diagnosis of Retinopathy of Prematurity (SUNDROP), Dr Moshfeghi can now obtain and view computerized images of the retina of a distant child without leaving his desk. What took hours out of his day before now takes minutes.

Wireless Healthcare report

Wide-ranging article with references about technology and people with dementia. A good read.

Psychiatric Times, November 2005

The King’s Fund review of social care in England, Securing Good Care for Older People, led by Sir Derek Wanless, referred to in the White Paper Our Health, Our Care, Our Say, was published today. TV, press and radio are giving most attention to the report’s recommendations on funding care but, importantly, it also gives an unequivocal endorsement of the need to include telecare in mainstream care services. The first recommendation in the Services and Service Re-configuration section says:

‘…enough pilot studies have now achieved positive results for telecare to be moved into the mainstream when planning long-term care for the elderly. The Review endorses current government policy in this regard, which is consistent with this recommendation. Funding should be deployed to realise the potential net value of telecare.’

References to telecare are sprinkled throughout the report which, helpfully, maintains a distinction between the terms ‘telecare’, ‘telehealth’ and ‘assistive technology’. Thankfully, the latter is used in its wide sense, including equipment such as stairlifts. (See our webpage What is telecare?)

However, telecare has a substantial 5 page section to itself (pages 155 – 160 (190 – 195 in the PDF version)) which considers the subject in a balanced way, going into some detail on cost benefit modelling (see our webpage Business Cases).

It also touches on other concerns: ‘Since loneliness is a big issue in old age, it might seem contrarian to promote technology which could reduce interaction with carers. But proponents of telecare argue that it can allow a redeployment of carer time, with a shift of resources towards more meaningful interactions. Given that an ‘intensive’ care package is usually defined as domiciliary care of more than 10 hours a week, that leaves many hours when telecare can complement formal care rather than substituting for it.’

In the future this report will undoubtedly be recognised as a turning point in the perception of telecare as a mainstream component of care services, and it was heartening to hear Minister Liam Byrne in his Radio 4 Today interview this morning refer twice to telecare and for James Naughtie not ask what it was!

Here are the links you need:

Kings Fund website to download full report and/or Chapter 9, which includes the main telecare section. There is a telecare background paper in the appendix to the report, which is not yet available on the site.

Radio 4 Today listen again. Navigate to today’s program and find the interview with Derek Wanless at 08.10 (2 hours 10 minutes into the whole broardcast) and Liam Byrne at 08.30 (2 hours 36 minutes in).

Monday to Thursday this week at 9.00 each evening, Channel 4 is running a series of documentaries under the banner ‘The Trouble with Old People’. Each has its own distinctive take on different aspects of life in later years: the agonising and intensely personal decision that has to be made when elderly relatives are no longer able to live independently; grown-up offspring who are torn between doing their duty and finding their elderly parents a burden; and the elderly on their own, longing to feel part of a family again and willing to be adopted to bridge the generation gap and create life-changing relationships

Monday 27 March: Me and My Mum (Tony Robinson)
Tuesday 28 March: Adopt-a-Grandad
Wednesday 29 March: Adopt-a-Granny
Thursday 30 March: Stairlift to Heaven

2nd Euro-China Workshop on Home Networks and Platforms, Beijing, P.R. China 28-30 May 2006. Not totally sure, but this may interest telecare manufacturers. Participation paid for by the EU. Contact organisers by 31 March if you want to contribute through poster presentations.

Visit the website

The Department of Health has published the final, formal determination of the Preventative Technology Grant (PTG) funding. In most cases amounts appear to vary by a few hundreds from the figures published in January, which were rounded to the nearest £1,000.

The publication coincides with the release of the Delivery and Improvement Statement (DIS), Adult Social Care 2005/06 – Guidance Document, by the Commission for Social Care Inspection, which references telecare in section 2.15

The determination does not say anything new, but reinforces certain messages. Core to these are:

‘Whilst the funding will go to all councils in England with social service responsibilities, they are expected to work with partners in the NHS, housing and district authorities, voluntary and independent sectors and service users and carers in developing telecare services. Telecare will be most effective where implemented as an integrated service.

‘…effective use of this grant will help local authorities and their partners to achieve key PSA targets…In addition, the CSCI Delivery and Improvement Statement will monitor the number of people benefitting from telecare since introduction of this grant. Councils should note well the contents of this circular.

‘Although this grant funding is primarily aimed at supporting older people, the Government’s vision is for telecare and other new technologies to be used, where appropriate, for the benefit of people of all ages including those with long-term conditions, learning disabilities, mental health problems and those needing end of life care.

‘Service strategies and policies for telecare should be formulated so that people with differing levels of need…can have the choice to remain at home whenever possible.

‘This grant is not intended to be treated as replacement funding for existing resources, including revenue funding for community alarms through the supporting People programme for example, in sheltered housing.’

Download from here

DIS Guidance 2005/06

Section 2.15 asks for baseline figures for 2005/06, and projections of numbers of people 2006/07 and 2007/08.

Download from here

Last Friday we picked up and posted information about an Alertacall press release and contacted the company to find out more. We were given the username and password for access to the councils’ site which contains details of the proposal. It is interesting reading.

In short, Alertacall is offering to help councils to meet half the population target they are supposed to contribute to the national total of 160,000 people to benefit from telecare, for a cost equivalent to just 4% of their Preventative Technology Grant. The proposal is that this will go a long way on the preventative front and will, at the same time, increase the relative amount available to spend on the other people in whom councils want to invest their PTG funding.

The Alertacall system is at the ‘low sophistication’ end of the telecare spectrum – hence its low cost – but, we suspect, meets a real need for many of the more independent older and disabled people and their relatives.

Alertacall seems to have provided lots of support materials on its site to help councils implement a publicity campaign. However, our readers can judge for themselves, as we have been given permission to make the site username and password available to you.

Follow this link and note the username and password before clicking on the button.

Forty chronic heart failure patients in Barnsley are using Docobo’s doc@HOME remote monitoring telehealth service, answering health and quality of life questions, and taking physiological measurements. Adrian Flowerday, MD of Docobo commented: “The team at Barnsley are one of the first in the UK to equip a significant number of patients with telehealth, and their careful and practical approach to the project is both innovative and bold.”

Read Docobo’s press release

This article starts with interesting statistics on the public’s response to a BBC programme on long-term care costs. More evidence that under the divisive English system – which the White Paper failed to tackle – service users and carers play piggy-in-the-middle between health and social care services, to their cost.

Link to Guardian Unlimited story.