The Future of Home Care Technology

from Aging in Place Technology Watch:

Sponsored by LivHome, Microsoft and Philips, the report entitled "The Future of Home Care Technology" looks at current technology use and processes, suggesting changes required to better serve recipients of care in the home.

Executive Summary

Experts agree that the home care industries (non-medical home care, home health care, and geriatric care management) are at the early stages of maximizing benefits of technology. Information about the individual client is not yet passed effectively or electronically between the various locations a care recipient may visit. In a survey of home care managers responsible for a total of 34,509 workers, telephone and email dominate the communication toolkit. Little in-home use is made of telehealth and chronic disease monitoring tech, even less use of video communication with either the care recipient or the family. As non-institutional home care plays a growing role along the care continuum, a Home Care Information Network (HCIN) will form, enabling important information to follow the care recipient across building boundaries, boosting quality and informing and reassuring families.

Full text at:

http://www.ageinplacetech.com/files/aip/Future%20of%20Home%20Care%20Technology%20Final-07-31-2012.pdf

Kaiser Permanente shares their vision of the future of Healthcare at NASA mHealth Conference

from mHealth Insight:

Shown for the first time at the recent NASA mHealth event held at KP’s Center for Total Health in Washington DC, this video was designed to help set out what the world’s first major healthcare brand to take a Mobile First focus thinks the US healthcare experience might look like in the not-so-distant future:

Full text at:

http://mhealthinsight.com/

An innovative iPhone App for touch-free heart rate monitoring

from iMedicalApps:

Cardiio has launched their first, much anticipated, biosensor that uses an iPhone or iPad camera to provide touch free heart rate measurements and related health predictions.

The app, priced at $4.99, is beautiful, intuitive, and claims to accurately assess resting heart rate to within three beats per minute of standard medical pulse monitors.

Cardiio and its PhD Co-Founders Ming-Zher Poh and Yukkee Poh spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, where the core technology was developed and published in multiple peer reviewed journals (see here, here, andhere). Cardiio is also a recent graduate of the digital health acceleator Rock Health.

While Cardiio’s technology is based on validated, cutting edge research–the application itself is deceptively simple and elegant to use. You literally place your face within a red circle on a stethoscope image, enjoy a few seconds of quotes celebrating science or childhood rhymes, and then receive your heart rate reading.

Full text at:

http://www.imedicalapps.com/2012/08/cardiio-iphone-touch-free-heart-rate-monitor/

Continua Alliance to help Denmark with telemedicine standards

from HealthcareITNews:

The homeland of Hans Christian Andersen, Tivoli Gardens and Hamlet is considered one of Europe's leaders in telemedicine. Now Denmark is relying upon the Continua Health Alliance to make sure that effort follows a uniform set of standards.

Officials at Continua, the Beaverton, Ore.-based non-profit organization focused on end-to-end, plug-and-play connectivity for personal health devices and services, say Denmark will be using Continua's design guidelines to develop an "Action Plan for Telemedicine." That plan will establish reference architectures and national standards for health IT "in areas including the secure collection, transmission and storage of personal health data from patients’ homes, sharing medical documents and images, and the management of health records, medical appointments and other related information."

Full text at:

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/continua-alliance-help-denmark-telemedicine-standards?topic=08,16,19,26

Experimental weigh scale also checks your heart

from gizmag:

People being monitored for heart conditions currently have to go into a hospital or clinic on a regular basis, to have an electrocardiogram performed on them. That may be about to change, however, as researchers from Spain’s Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya have developed a bathroom scale that performs the procedure right in the user’s home.

Full text at:

http://www.gizmag.com/weigh-scale-electrocardiogram/23519/

Honda uses Asimo technology to get the elderly on their feet

from gizmag:

Honda has been working on walking robot technology since the 1980s and the 130 patents that resulted in its ASIMO robot have allowed the automotive giant to expand into creating a new range of assisted mobility devices, including the Stride Management Assist. This lightweight, surprisingly simple-looking device is designed to help those with weakened leg muscles due to age or other causes, yet who are still able to walk. It does this by giving a robotically controlled boost to the upper legs that allows the wearer to walk faster for longer.

Full text at:
http://www.gizmag.com/honda-stride-management-assist/23512/