The Mail on Sunday’s alarmist article End of the doctors surgery? GP visits to be replaced by Skype consultations in bid to save NHS £3bn (MailOnline version with 340+ comments) only needed a mention of the 3millionlives (3ML) initiative to
Read More

“Up to 10 years ago, Michael [Burkhill] was enjoying life as regional manager for a brick company in Wakefield. Driving home from Leeds one evening he had a heart attack. Five years later, in 2007, his health further deteriorated and
Read More

CCGs to lead huge telehealth expansion is the headline on a GP Online item about the announcement of the ‘pathfinder’ sites that are using lessons from, and being studied after, the Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) RTC, as noted at the
Read More

Launched at the TSA conference last week, a new product from Halliday James Ltd. Called the EASE bracelet, it has some features that make it more interesting than the average GPS tracking device. For example, it can link to a
Read More

Who has benefited - or not - from the UK's Telecare, Telehealth and Telecoaching procurement framework RM784? The 'winners and losers' can now be revealed thanks to a Freedom of Information request by Telecare Aware. The results raise some profound issues for proponents of further framework agreements.

The following chart lists the seven companies who have received - or declared - sales totalling over £100,000 from the start of the agreement to the present day.

Tunstall's predominant position, with sales of nearly £16 million through the framework will be a surprise to no one, although the size of its lead over its competitors may be. The company with the second highest declared sales value, Questmark, is a videoconferencing supplier not known for its presence in the monitoring people at home arena. [Happy to be corrected on that one, if you know different. Ed. Steve UPDATE: See information about Questmark here.]

There are a further 13 companies who have had sales through the framework of less than £100,000 in total. They are: Cross Keys Homes; Airedale NHS Trust; Telecare UK Ltd; iPlato Healthcare; CarelineUK Monitoring Ltd; Chubb Community Care; Tynetec; Mediaburst Ltd; Just Checking Ltd; Cirrus Communication Systems Ltd; Docobo Ltd; Icom Projects; Invicta Telecare Ltd.

The lack of ANY sales by the other 42 companies who were selected for the framework must raise eyebrows.

The non-sales by some companies must reflect the flawed selection procedure. But some companies appear either to have made no use of the framework or they have not declared their sales to the Government Procurement Service (GPS), which now runs it. The latter is a condition of being on the framework and it is required so that GPS can receive the percentage of the contract values which justify its existence.

Of course, sales through the framework do not reflect the business that companies have been doing outside it - via non-framework tenders and for amounts below which councils etc. do not have to tender, for example - but if any organisation believes that it has done business under the terms of the framework agreement with any of the following companies, then the GPS will surely be interested to hear from them...
Read More

Another project of the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Health Matters Initiative will, according to Neil Versel in Mobihealthnews, be advocating and funding telehealth and remote monitoring as part of promoting healthy lifestyles, healthy food and physical activity as
Read More

Knowing your customer (see next story): All the rage now in healthcare systems is adopting ‘lean’ processes originally developed for the manufacturing area, which involves process mapping, identifying non-value added areas and redesigning to eliminate waste of time and resources.
Read More