Extending the range of home tele-services that can be brought to today's patients.

 

December 2005
Long-Term Telecare at Home: Headway Being Made in the UK
that all of us can learn from….

This installment of the Home Telehealth Community of Care focuses on long-term home telecare strategies for the elderly that are being practiced today in the United Kingdom.

All of us in the US may well start out with the usual bias: Dismiss what’s being done and strides being made in the UK, because they’re being paid for after all by the UK’s National Health Service-- so unlike our healthcare system. However, we need to look closer at needs and costs of eldercare in the US and ask whether we’re really addressing the long-term care needs of elders living here.

What’s being practiced in the UK that’s missing here, to date, are:

• A range of “social alarm” tools for helping elderly residents live safely and independently at home. Among these tools are sensors placed on stoves and water valves to alert the elderly when gas or water has been left on. Details about today’s tele-tools, UK style, are provided below in the Telecare Tools segment.
• Connectivity linking the alarm devices’ elderly owners with a range of technical personnel and colleagues/friends to assist. The “how to” and “why do” issues of telecare use today are described by an expert closely involved in telecare device development and use, in the Telecare Workshop segment.
• Social service management at all levels of need. A range of adult social service workers are involved with matching assistive technology with need and risk level of elderly clients who live at home. An Expert Panel of 3 persons active today in the UK telecare community provides details on connectivity and communications opportunities to enhance elderly persons’ daily lives and sense of well being, in our Look Homeward installment, below.

Same needs among the elderly, different places.

Key issues to introduce you to telecare as it is and should be everywhere are provided in the Coming Home segment, by expert developer and industry futurist Dr. Kevin Doughty, Deputy Director, Centre for Usable Home Technology, University of York, York, England.

Welcome to your first lessons to be learned from elder service planners and tool developers on the Other Side of The Pond.

Telecare Tools for the Elderly, UK style New must-have tools for helping the elderly stay at home safely.	Telecare Workshop Here’s a view on what’s needed, what’s working, and items for future development, in UK home telecare for the elderly.
Look Homeward To homes on The Other Side of the Pond… with 3 experts, who discuss connectivity and communications opportunities for the elderly.	Coming Home Dr. Kevin Doughty has spent the last decade on producing telecare tools and teaching telecare use. See his views on using telecare to transform the way that people maintain their independence when challenged by age, disability, or loss of function or senses… In effect benefiting all of us, eventually.