The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7426 p564
11 November 2006

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

  Acrobat Reader

News summary

Large-scale pilots planned by health department to test telecare/telehealth schemes

The Department of Health is planning to conduct large-scale telecare and telehealth pilots that will involve one million people with complex long-term conditions.

Telecare involves fitting electronic devices, such as fall sensors and panic buttons, in people’s homes to allow them to stay at home for longer. Telehealth is designed to complement health care and works by monitoring vital signs, such as blood pressure, and transmitting the data to a response centre or clinician’s computer.

The groups to be targeted are the frail elderly with complex health and social care needs and patients of any age suffering from chronic heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or type 2 diabetes. Several thousand telehealth and telecare installations are planned for the two-year pilots.

Applications will be invited in the near future from NHS and local authority partnerships. Further information is available on the DoH website