In 2007 several themes emerged in the Telecare Aware stories. The principal one has been the positioning of the big players, particularly Intel and Philips, to take advantage of what many people believe will be the next big consumer-driven wave to drive developments in ‘connected homes’ and mobile phone-based applications. The scramble of smaller suppliers to join the Continua Alliance in 2007, despite the cost of membership, shows an industry consensus around the expectation of market development and a desire to not be left out. However, the focus of this trend is health monitoring rather than telecare of the ‘social care monitoring’ variety. I’m therefore expecting to see more and more health monitoring stories to appear in the mainstream media in 2008.
Another Telecare Aware theme of 2007 was to give examples of how telecare and telehealth stories were being presented in local print media which, in the UK and US is still a primary means of communication about matters that affect people’s daily lives. Sadly, many of the UK stories followed a rather familiar and pedestrian formula which failed to bring the story alive in a way that would stimulate demand. The best stories seemed to be sparked off when an enthusiastic telecare manager got together with a journalist and they actually went out and visited one or two people.
For 2008, Telecare Aware will continue to bring you news of developments as they occur. Will the speculation (that was doing the rounds in the UK in 2007) that so many councils now have a surplus of telecare equipment sitting unused on their shelves that it is going to be hard for manufacturers to make sales in 2008, turn into a real story? Or will the apparent inability of many councils to stimulate demand for their telecare services lead to casualties amongst supply companies?
For my part, I intend to switch attention this year from local stories to matters of terminology.
The word ‘Telecare’ and its related variants are used across the world in a considerable number of ways and there is no sign of a consensus growing around what systems should be called. I now think the time is ripe for an organisation to agree and promote a consistent worldwide taxonomy. A prime candidate to do so would be, of course, the Continua Alliance. This ought to be a hot issue for it. For example, all the working groups are meeting separately during Continua’s Winter Summit (Ireland, 23-24 January) and without clarity of terminology there is huge scope for confusion.
However, when its very own objectives contain a glaring grammatical error, am I being over-optimistic in thinking that the Continua Alliance could be trusted to sort this out? I do hope not.