Telecare eNewsletter February 2014

Welcome to the February 2014 newsletter from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) HealthTech Knowledge Transfer Network and the Telecare Learning and Improvement Network.

Launched October 2005, our free monthly newsletter is now distributed to 48,000 subscribers in the UK and worldwide via e-mail and archived at www.telecarelin.org.uk. You can also find highlights on Rebelmouse (daily) or by following Mike Clark on Twitter (@clarkmike).

With over 800 news and events links over the last month, we hope that you find this newsletter useful. There is also an additional supplement covering some of the important journal articles from 2013.

NHS Expo in early March 2014 will be setting the scene for 2014/5 as the NHS faces a potential funding gap of £30bn, more foundation trusts are heading towards deficits, there are talks of CCG mergers and a headline project, care.data, has now been moved to an Autumn start so that public awareness can be raised. Meanwhile, local authority social care services are going through a further round of budget cuts, although some money will be transferred from the NHS during 2014/15 to maintain services. It will be a difficult period for the NHS as they look to transfer £2bn of funds from primarily hospital services into the Better Care Fund pooled budgets for 2015/2016. It is a crucial time for services that use technology to demonstrate that they are cost-effective and help to improve outcomes - services not included in local pooled funds as priorities to support people in the community could become marginalised. Meanwhile, the big tech companies (Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft) appear to be investing heavily in consumer, mobile health and wellbeing applications. With announcements and publications hourly it can be difficult to follow what is happening. You can keep up to date with developments in this newsletter, via the KTN and dallas groups as well as following Twitter, LinkedIn and other recommended news streams.

For weekly news, updates and information, you can register with the Technology Strategy Board, ALIP group and the dallas sub-group and follow the HealthTech KTN. You can follow the dallas programme on Twitter at @dallas_connect. 3 Million Lives is on LinkedIn. You can also access a Twitter Stream via the TelecareLIN website.

There are two supplements this month - the normal monthly links supplement and a further supplement covering journal articles from 2013.