Telecare eNewsletter January 2015
Welcome to the January 2015 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 1800 news and event links over the last month, we hope that you find this newsletter useful.
It was on the cards for months - a full blown NHS crisis over the festive period. Although A&E attendance was not particularly high in England, admissions increased and the media searched for who was to blame given an extra £700m had been made available for winter pressures. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all announced poor performance figures too. Fortunately, at the end of January, the position was improving but there is still a long way to go with integration, care coordination, managing patient flow for people with long term conditions (70% of spend), sharing data and using technologies to support a workforce geared to personalised treatment and support. This month's newsletter captures the key links as the NHS and wider care sector look for new 21st century care models and vanguard sites. A new year brings the inevitable review of the previous year and a look forwards to possible trends for health, care and digital/technology for 2015. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015) from Las Vegas is always on hand to identify the great and not so great products that may find buy-in from increasingly tech-savvy consumers - health, fitness and wearable devices all featured. As we head into a UK election period, we can expect public announcements to dry up because of Government restrictions on what can be published. Business as usual will start again in the late Summer with possibly new Government priorities and no doubt continuing issues around funding. Meanwhile, the £5.3bn Better Care Fund kicks off in England along with the Care Act 2014 requirements. Also in the newsletter this month, there's plenty of new resources around Technology Enabled Care Services (TECS) - NHS Commissioning Assembly, MALT Study, University of Cumbria/CSC telehealth readiness tool are all covered in this edition. There are plenty of conferences around digital health and care along with serious numbers of developments from the UK and around the world. Along with the usual links listing (1800 this month), there is an extra supplement covering a summary list of Journal articles mentioned in 2014's newsletters.
For daily/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 follow the Long Term Care Revolution at #LTCRevolution or via Facebook.
Two supplements are available this month: