The heavily trailed Government White Paper ‘Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services’ was published on the DH website this afternoon. It has been flagged in the media as being about improving patient choice (what a surprise!) and moving hospital services out into the community. (They still don’t get it do they?) We will read and comment in due course…
In the meantime, we can let you know that ‘telecare’ gets six mentions (four of which are confined to the Glossary); ‘telehealth’ and ‘ehealth’ have no mentions, and ‘telemedicine’ and the US TELeHEART project have one mention each. ‘Assistive technology’ appears five times, two of which clearly conflate it with ‘telecare’. Furthermore, they can’t even get the name of their grant right.