Telecare eNewsletter May 2014

Welcome to the May 2014 newsletter from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), 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 1700 news and events links over the last month, we hope that you find this newsletter useful.

All the indications are that 2014/15 will be a challenging year for the NHS and social care. Some influential commentators are questioning how the £5bn Better Care Fund transformation will work in particular moving funding from the hospital system into community services. The Department of Health with the Local Government Association will be implementing an accreditation system to ensure that plans are fully thought through and are on track. During 2014/15 over £1bn of NHS funding will be moved to social care in England. A recent MHP report suggests that previous transfers have not done much more than help maintain some social care funding for existing services - there has been little additional investment in telecare and other preventative services from transferred funds over the last couple of years according to the report. Both hospital and primary care services in the UK appear to be under considerable pressure. There are many ideas and innovations out there that could potentially improve outcomes but major service transformation appears slow as commissioners have difficulty in demonstrating the value of reinvesting existing funding in different ways. The debates over technology support and service transformation continue whether its care.data, online medical records or video and email consults. A June highlight will be the 'self care in the digital age' event at the King's Fund which is supported by dallas and the Technology Strategy Board - this will address the positives and negatives of self care and self management - if you are not attending, do join in the online discussions. June will also see publication of the TECS delivery plan from NHS England and progress on projects like the Long Term Care Revolution.

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

A Links Supplement is available this month in 2 formats - pdf, doc