Telehealthcare project details published

The 12 projects being run alongside the UK’s biggest ever trial of assistive technologies are testing a range of telehealth and telecare innovations, according to a report.

Details of the projects being carried out by the Whole System Demonstrator Action Network, a group of 12 PCTs supporting the WSD project, have been published by the King’s Fund, which is running the network.

The 12 PCTs were selected from the unsuccessful bids for the WSD project which is testing assistive technologies with 6,000 patients across three areas, Newham, Cornwall and Kent.

Nick Goodwin, a senior fellow at the King’s Fund and co-project lead for WSDAN, said the pilots were taking a mix of approaches from pilots aimed at specific patients or disease groups to wider service models and strategies.

In Barnsley, adult services, Care Services Direct and NHS Barnsley are developing joint working arrangements that focus on up to 200 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and will use both telehealth and telecare.

NHS Central Lancashire is looking at equipping GPs with remote support for recording electrocardiograms (ECGs). And in Leicester, an initial target group of 360 people with frequent admissions for heart disease, COPD and diabetes have been identified as potential telehealth users.

Other projects in the network include Birmingham’s Own Health project, offering telephone support to patients with long term conditions. The plan is to expand this to 27,000 patients by 2012.

Nottingham aims to deploy telehealth monitors to around 800 people with long-term conditions such as COPD and congestive heart failure.

And NHS Southampton is running telehealth systems in COPD and CHD as part of an EU project. This site is also part of a project that is developing inter-operability between telehealth and telecare systems and out-of-hours and community alarm systems.

Learning from each of the sites is to be fed back to the rest of the WSDAN members and to the DH’s WSD programme evaluation team.