Tag: Telecare

mHealth – Mobile Monday Amsterdam (Part 1)

Watch the Video  |   See the Slides

The organisers probably weren’t expecting snow, but it didn’t stop the audience turning up en masse to Mobile Monday’s mHealth meeting in Amsterdam last week. The presentations were far from chilling;  mHealth is moving from a position of  relative obscurity a year ago, to something that every network operator feels they need to have.  Vodafone, AT&T and Telefonica have already declared that it’s a key part of their strategy.  The potentially still-born US health reform and accompanying monetary stimulus plans have convinced many more that there’s money to be made from it, and 400 plus attendees were keen to understand where those opportunities may be.

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We need a Manifesto for Consumer Health and Wellness

At the Continua Health Alliance summit in Boston this week, most of the speakers are talking enthusiastically about the amount of Government momentum for reform of the healthcare system.  Keynote speakers from all areas of the medical industry are telling us how things will change.

It’s not a new message, albeit it has been revitalised by the prospect of the Obama billions.  The physicians believe that they can heal themselves, or at least the system they work in.  So it came as a breath of fresh air to see a posting that popped into my inbox from Joe Macaluso on Real Health Reform.  It argues that the only way we will see any real reform is if it’s done by patients, without the support of Congress or the medical industry.

Over in Europe, the EU is running a debate on Consumers and Health, asking for contributions to a seminar in Brussels at the end of the month.  I’d been thinking about this for some time and had come to the conclusion that the most useful thing that the EU commission could do would be to look at how to change the regulatory playing field.  That’s necessary to let patient-based groups start to take healthcare and even prescribing into their own hands.  To achieve that I think we need a Manifesto for Consumer Health, that provides a safe environment for disruptive developments.  By coincidence I’d just finished writing my thoughts on that, which I was posting to the EU Consumers and Health site as Joe’s mail came in.  After reading Joe’s post, I’ve added a poll asking “Whether you believe that healthcare reform needs to be driven by patients, rather than medics or legislators?”  Please go and vote – I’ll post the result in a later blog.

So why do I think we need a manifesto..? 

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Twittering about Temazepam – Why social networking can affect your Doctor’s health

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency recently published a strategy document on how they intend to connect with patients and public bodies.  It’s an eminently sensible thing to do, and when they answered some questions about it they made the equally sensible comment that “these may include using social networking sites, blogs and text messages”.  Rather that concentrating on the good sense of their strategy, that line generated the predictable knee jerk reaction from much of the medical press.  Conservative as ever, they bridled at yet another attempt to let patients and carers take any part in managing their health.  Instead of accepting that there might be something in the announcement, they preferred to puff and pontificate, raking up the standard old muck, such as the claim that 25%of GPs end up treating patients who have bought medicines over the Internet.  You get the impression they’d rather prescribe us a sleeping draught than run the risk that we might spend a waking moment with a web browser.

It’s a shame that this reaction is still so prevalent.  Social networks and the Internet will never be a replacement for medical care, but they have the ability to play a much greater role in how we live and manage disease.  Everyone with an ounce of sense who has looked at the demographics knows that we cannot continue with the current model.  We shouldn’t be pouring scorn on social networking, we should be looking carefully to see how it can help our healthcare experience evolve.

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Digital Britain – Enabling Healthcare

Last week Stephen Carter, UK Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, launched the Government’s Interim report on Digital Britain.  I’d recommend reading it – its scope is wide and it contains a refreshing amount of joined up thinking.  The initial press coverage concentrated on its aim to bring broadband to all UK homes by 2012.  That’s a highly laudable aim, but by concentrating on that one conclusion the media missed much of the more promising underlying detail, particularly its relevance to home telecare.

 

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Designing Consumer Medical Products

 

To coincide with the Medica exhibition I wrote a White Paper called “Trust me – I’m not a Doctor” to explore some of the changes that I think are necessary for the development of usable consumer health devices.  One reader came back to me with a very pertinent question – “It’s one thing to say what needs to change, but what steps can manufacturers take in order to keep up with the latest developments in technology?”

 

It’s a very good question.  Much of the medical industry concentrates on gradual evolution.  It’s not an industry that is either particularly fast moving, or prone to disruptive influences.  Certainly Medica was very much about more of the same and not doing anything new.

 

That poses a real problem, and to address it I think you have to take a deliberatively disruptive approach by thinking outside the box.  Rather than asking how to keep abreast of technology, which is only likely to increase the pace of the current linear evolution, I’d suggest the more heretical view of thinking about what happens to the market when the clinician is excluded from it. 

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Virtual Hospitals – the NHS’ future

Professor Nick Bosanquet – a director of the centre-right think tank Reform ruffled a number of feathers at the end of last year when he stated that the NHS would do well to invest in virtual infrastructure.  The core of his argument is that patients should send their data to the hospital for diagnosis rather than turning up themselves to be measured.  We couldn’t agree more.

It’s surprising that it had the effect that it did.  For several years everyone within the health service has known that it is heading for bankruptcy, as is every other health service in the world.  We’re getting older – by 2010 over 40% of Europeans will be aged over 50, which means that the number of people in work paying taxes to support the growing bulk of the population (in all of its senses) is becoming an intractable problem. 

The solution is generally agreed to be more remote monitoring of patients to try and keep them out of hospital.  However much we bang that drum, the message is largely ignored.  What has engaged the attention of the media is the modest proposal that this means we may need to build fewer hospitals or that we’re building the wrong sort.

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