Intel-GE Care Innovations is the latest to jump on the ‘senior social connectedness’ wagon train with Care Innovations Connect. Form factor: a compact flat touchscreen monitor which provides reminders, access to news, information and local alerts, calendaring, brain fitness games, wellness surveys and some messaging/photo sharing capability. There is also a caregiver dashboard that permits monitoring of client responses and provides trending/alerting for potential health or cognitive issues. It is not a telehealth device, and is promoted as primarily for older people who live in communities or who are in home care. The release rightly emphasizes the all-too-detrimental effects of loneliness and social isolation on older people but – irony alert – doesn’t mention, as one of the demo videos briefly does, that the research was done in conjunction with Dublin’s TRIL Centre and Intel Digital Health. Evangelical Homes of Michigan, the pilot site, is the first official customer. Product website (with videos) HealthcareITNews article.  (NEW) Information Week article. AgeinPlaceTech blog (Laurie Orlov).

[Updated 23 July: Ed. Donna does find it interesting that Intel-GE Care Innovations is now entering the ‘connectedness’ area, with some very nice quotes on the health effects of loneliness from CEO Louis Burns.  Here CI goes up against the wider capabilities of other touchscreens such as GrandCare Systems’ Trillium and HomeBase, Waldo Health (which integrates telehealth and video), Sonamba, Independa’s Angela and others. But it also continues to puzzle that each CI device is standalone and doesn’t integrate with other CI systems such as QuietCare sensor-based residential monitoring–primarily in senior communities–or Care Innovations Guide in telehealth, when it would be to their distinct advantage to demostrate their interoperability capabilities. Is that not the point?]