The Doctor Will See You Now, Wherever You Are

FoxBusiness:
The continuing doctor shortage throughout the country and the growing prevalence of Internet use in people’s everyday lives are driving forces behind the recent surge in the popularity of telehealth services.

Telehealth, or telemedicine as it was previously known, enables patients and doctors to connect anytime anywhere online or via mobile phone. It also gives people in rural areas access to specialists without having to drive to the next major town. Recent improvements in sensory technology allows doctors can access patients’ vital signs in real time without having to schedule an office visit.

“For so many years if you were sick you had to go where the health care was,” says Roy Schoenberg, chief executive of Boson-based American Well. “For the very first time we’re brining health care to you and making it part of the medicine cabinet.”

Full text at:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/08/30/telehealth-doctor-will-see-now-wherever-are/

Empowering e-Patients

RehabCoach:
Healthcare is changing. No longer do patients have to see a medical practitioner at the hospital, or solely rely on the doctor’s advice as the most up-to-date, accurate health information that’s out there. Given the near ubiquity of the Internet, patients are now exercising personal responsibility, leveraging social media, and technology to access health information and to participate in the treatment planning process. This is the new model of healthcare, one that combines personal responsibility with collective intelligence and a participatory network of patients, treatment coaches, and medical practitioners.

Full text at:

http://www.rehabcoach.com/blog/2011/09/empowering-e-patients-why-treatment-plans-are-important/

Mobile application store for healthcare professionals

HealthcareITNews:

While #mhealth or mobile health is taking the world by storm, Happtique, a mobile application store developed specifically for healthcare professionals, aims to make sense of it all. Happtique, Healthcare-APP-bouTIQUE, provides a growing app catalog of what it calls “hApps” or healthcare applications.

The store prides itself on its curation since it was developed by healthcare professionals for healthcare professionals. In other app stores, searches are limited to “medical” or “health,” generating hundreds of generalized pages of apps. Apple recently attempted to develop its own App Store for Healthcare Professionals, but many believe it to be disappointingly curated. Unlike iTunes, Happtique is platform agnostic and more specific in categorizing health and medical apps by topic and target user.

Full text at:

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/mhealth-targeting-healthcare-professionals

New workbooks - Teleconsultation and Telemonitoring

The Yorkshire and Humber Health Innovation and Education Cluster (HIEC) has published two workbooks: Teleconsultation and Telemonitoring. The workbooks are first in a series of “how to” resources for Managers and Clinicians.

More information at:

http://yhhiec.org.uk/teleconsultation-and-telemonitoring-workbooks-now-available/

Researchers Turn a Smart Phone Into a Medical Monitor

ScienceDaily:

An iPhone app that measures the user's heart rate is not only a popular feature with consumers, but it sparked an idea for a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher who is now turning smart phones, and eventually tablet devices, into sophisticated medical monitors able to capture and transmit vital physiological data.

A team led by Ki Chon, professor and head of biomedical engineering at WPI, has developed a smart phone application that can measure not only heart rate, but also heart rhythm, respiration rate and blood oxygen saturation using the phone's built-in video camera. The new app yields vital signs as accurate as standard medical monitors now in clinical use. Details of the new technology are published online, in advance of print, by the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

Full text at:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111006113622.htm

Technology to Make Old-Age Safer

ScienceDaily:

A fall alarm. Automatic nightlight. Oven reminder. Refrigerator alarm. These are just a few of the new welfare technology solutions that may become a normal part of the lives of the elderly in the future.

New technology and ways of organising activities are needed if we are to meet the challenges facing the welfare state and the enormous needs for health and care services. But technology must not replace personal care and human warmth. The aim is to enhance the quality of life of elderly people who want to live at home as long as possible.

Full text at:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111006084030.htm

Nursing care in a virtual world

domain-b.com:
''Fishermen on boats, they eat all kinds of stuff,'' says nursing professor Antonia Arnaert. She is voluble in her excitement about her most recent research project, which involved teaching patients with uncontrolled diabetes to use smart phones and the Internet to communicate with the nurses responsible for monitoring their health.

The nurses monitored patient responses from a distance and provided the appropriate follow-up as needed. If the patient's readings were outside predetermined parameters, the values appeared in red in the system and an alarm was triggered.

''Patients with chronic diseases like diabetes, or who have gone through surgery, often have lots of questions and the doctors and nurses don't always have the time to answer them,'' Arnaert said. ''My work is about trying to develop a new method of providing nursing care and telenursing has a big role to play there.''

Full text at:
http://www.domain-b.com/technology/Health_Medicine/20110914_virtual_world.html

"This is the future"

Irish Examiner:

"This is the future," he said after seeing technology that has been developed in the top two age-related research centres based in Louth.

The county is one of 33 places locations around the world that meet the criteria of the World Health Organisation’s age-friendly cities network.

Mr Duffy is chairing the Age-Friendly Business Forum in Louth, which launches its action plan today.

"We are way ahead of the game here, and instead of cursing the darkness of the recession, here people are instead doing things," he added.

The Health Buddy technology, already in use in Dundalk, is credited with helping to save two lives.

It is now introducing the Home Sweet Home project, where 60 houses in the county will be fitted with interactive touchscreens and allow people with acute conditions to be monitored interactively in their own homes via Bluetooth technology.

Full text at:

http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/dragon-backs-health-buddy-plan-for-elderly-166464.html#ixzz1bEdOb4Wp

Clients who need, but decline, telecare

Telecare Aware:
From time-to-time we have clients referred for telecare who would clearly benefit from it, but who decline the service. They have the right to do that, of course, but there is always the lingering doubt about why they would do so and whether we could have done more to sell (in the nicest possible way) the service to them.

First, is it possible that they do not understand what the service is about and the equipment involved? It is all too easy to slip into using technical terms and product names which have no meaning at all to the person. Where possible, taking equipment to the assessment improves understanding and also allows the assessor to check that, for example, where a pendant is required the person is able to press the butto.

Full text at: 

http://www.telecareaware.com/index.php/telecare-soapbox-clients-who-need-but-decline-telecare.html

Remaking American Medicine: At-Home Monitoring

Developing an IT ecosystem for health could improve—and transform—the practice of medicine

A special commission, the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), issued a report last December calling for the creation of an information technology infrastructure for health care in the U.S. Such an IT ecosystem starts with the widespread adoption of electronic health records. But it could go beyond that to devices that collect data about how people live their lives or offer them feedback for making healthy choices. It could include individual databases that gather information relevant to health from a wide variety of sources, and collections of aggregated, anonymized data to aid public-health decisions or supplement clinical trials.

At-Home Monitoring

Health records could also be fed by devices that collect information about people as they go about their lives. The U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) system already uses the Health Buddy, an electronic device that plugs into a home phone line or Ethernet socket. Each day patients answer a series of questions tailored to their particular medical conditions, asking, for example, whether they have taken their medications or about their glucose levels. Answers are sent to the VA and flagged if they show warning signs.
"Versions of that will be in every home, or at least every home where there's a health condition that could be supported by that," says Molly Joel Coye, head of the UCLA Innovates Healthcare initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We will know what your blood pressure is every morning at 8 o'clock, or how it varies during the day, instead of every six or eight months when you go to the doctor."
Such increased monitoring could catch potential problems earlier, perhaps leading to more effective treatment or outright prevention of some conditions. It could also reduce costs. The VA estimates its in-home monitoring saves thousands of dollars per patient by reducing doctors' visits and nursing home care.

Full text at:

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/9/122801-remaking-american-medicine/fulltext#body-2

iPads help jog memory, train brains at retirement center

Cult of Mac:
A retirement center in Florida says an iPad pilot program started in July is helping keep residents young at heart.

The iPad’s large touch screen and light weight are helping healthy residents socialize more — as they play with puzzles and games — and it’s been “pretty amazing,” the home director says with re-educating stroke and dementia patients.

Fulltext at:
http://www.cultofmac.com/115733/ipads-help-jog-memory-train-brains-at-retirement-center/

Video at OrlandoSentinel: 

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/technology/osvideo-ipads-for-eledrly-20110922,0,130032.premiumvideo