Published simultaneously with the BMJ’s WSD results article, the Nuffield Trust’s part of the analysis: patients’ hospital use and mortality. “For intervention patients, the overall costs of hospital care (including emergency admissions, elective admissions and outpatient attendances), were £188 per… Read moreNuffield: The impact of telehealth and telecare: evaluation of the Whole System Demonstrator project

At last, the BMJ has published the first of five articles giving detailed results from the Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) Programme. This analysis “reports on how telehealth affected the use of secondary healthcare and mortality. The other analyses will assess how telehealth affected quality of life and cost effectiveness, and explores [sic] the patient, professional, and organisation factors related to implementation.” Effect of telehealth on use of secondary care and mortality: findings from the Whole System Demonstrator cluster randomised trial has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License so the link should be available permanently. However, just in case, you can download the full PDF version here. The abstract gives us…

Because the NHS is so dear to the heart of British people, it is not difficult for Secretaries of State for Health who try to improve it to become unpopular. Holding that office has blighted numerous ministerial and political careers…. Read moreKiss of death for telehealth in the UK?

Your weekend read. Bradley Merrill Thompson of Epstein, Becker writes at length (three pages!) over at Mobihealthnews on where FDA is going in regulating pharmaceutical apps. This is a proliferating area, with only 100 or so now available but many… Read moreFDA regulation of pharma apps: the story so far