The difficulty of assessing mobility in older adults may be helped by the Mobility Assessment Tool (MAT) in development at Wake Forest University (North Carolina). “Using an iPad or PC, older adults watch short videos of animated figures performing everyday… Read moreiPad tool for assessing mobility

Israel-based OxiTone is the developer of a wrist-worn oximeter which measures blood oxygen levels continuously, sending the information via Bluetooth to a wearer’s smartphone. Oxygen saturation is a key vital sign for those with COPD. Current ‘pulse-ox’ meters are generally… Read moreWristwatch-style oximeter developed (Israel)

From David Shaywitz, a writer attending the FutureMed/Singularity University conference near Google’s HQ in California, a further dissection of the disconnect between healthcare technology (not all IT) and the everyday practice of healthcare. (Ed. Donna would also add the everyday… Read moreMind the gap between tech and medicine

David Whelan of Forbes turns a gimlet eye (not Ed. Donna’s, but close) on healthcare tech startups that overpromote into a stratospheric ‘hype zone’ of self-importance. His case in point is ZocDoc, an appointment setter for participating doctors that will… Read moreA call for 'dialing back the hype'

Or ‘beyond Angry Birds’…Harvard University researchers have been testing a smartphone app that effectively desensitizes users to a common fixation in social anxiety–hostile faces in a crowd. The app shows faces, hostile and neutral, stacked on the screen, which then… Read moreSmartphone apps to reduce social anxiety

AirStrip, which recently announced an investment from the Qualcomm Life Fund and a redirect to home health monitoring [TA 10 Feb], is adopting Diversinet’s MobiSecure technology for authentication, encryption and mobile security. This will help their hospital-grade monitoring on smartphones… Read moreAirStrip selects MobiSecure for government health apps

We do not know how many telehealth and telecare companies will turn up at the 3ML meeting next Wednesday, 29 February, ready to hand over their blank cheques and to submit to the proposed communications muzzle but indications are that the response has not been as positive as the Working Group would have hoped.

Perhaps a sense of reality has set in on Plan A which was to get industry to fund a mass media campaign. As experienced telecare campaigner John Chambers, of the London Telecare group pointed out in a comment on a previous Telecare Aware 3ML item, “This needs… [Read more]

A long and thoughtful article in MIT’s Technology Review with lessons for everyone planning a large, government-inspired project. It describes how the Kenyan health ministry “wanted to let community health workers put information into the database directly from mobile phones,… Read moreKenya's startup boom

The approvals pave the way for Aerotel to start offering the GeoSkeeper system in the USA and Canada and Aerotel has started negotiations with several security and medical alert service providers in North America to start offering it in the… Read moreAerotel's GeoSkeeper receives FCC and IC approvals (US & Canada)