Telecare eNewsletter November 2014

Welcome to the November 2014 newsletter from Innovate UK (previously Technology Strategy Board), 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 1400 news and event links over the last month, we hope that you find this newsletter useful.

Pressures on health and care continue as The King's Fund reports that 60 per cent of hospitals in England are currently in deficit. With an additional £700m to support hospitals this year, attention now turns to the Chancellor's autumn statement to see whether or not more funding will be available to meet some of the expectations of October's 'Five Year Forward View'. Question marks still remain over the Better Care Fund as only six of 151 sites have been given full approval so far to proceed without any conditions or additional support plan requirements. The pooled fund arrangements previously made extensive references to the role of technology enabled care services in supporting people at home and reducing admissions - will there still be commitments in the final plans? On a more encouraging note, The National Information Board has published 'Personalised Health and Care 2020' - neither a plan nor a strategy, the document sets out existing milestones and expectations for the use of data, health records, apps, digital health and care technologies. The Autumn conference season is drawing to a close with plenty of activity recently at EHI Live and annual events from the Telecare Services Association and Royal Society of Medicine. Another successful week of telehealth & digital tech was held in Scotland together with confirmation of £10m funding. The next stage of the Long Term Care Revolution has commenced ready for the national competition next April. Along with the usual links listing, there is an extra supplement this month covering public domain links to telehealth in England (more coverage to come in December) - if you know of further projects and programmes, then do let us know.

For weekly news, updates and information, you can register with Innovate UK's ALIP group and the dallas group. You can follow the dallas programme on Twitter at @dallas_connect. You can also access a Twitter Stream via the TelecareLIN website.

Two supplements are available this month:

  • Links Supplement in two formats - pdf, doc
  • Telehealth links in England - pdf, doc