Questions for the future of home automation in health care

Next thursday I will be member of a panel (together with Joachim De Vos from Living Tomorrow & Philip Minnaert from Care Home Carpentier) discussing about the future of home automation in health care.
It will be a very interactive discussing with an audience filled with health care professionals (link to the event, in dutch, here: http://www.facilitynights.com/zorgcongres/).

Looking forward to the answers they will be giving to following questions:

1. Is home automation (or technology in general) for elderly "comfort"or "necessity"? (responding to attractiveness, progress, HR deficit)
2. How will a nursing home -through technology- 'take care' of a region? (through linked houses)
3. Is home automation a violation of privacy?
4. Will residential care evolve into houses of mourning? (because technology enables the elderly to stay home longer and more independently)
5. Will residential care be organised solely by large institutions ... or only through local (linked) initiatives?
6. Given the labor shortage, deploying robots is inevitable - or should we import "guest workers" in large quantities?
7. How much will automation technology blur the boundaries between skilled medical professionals and unskilled manpower?
8. What happens to human contact when communication with the outside world is done via screens (and / or augmented reality)?
9. If a multitude of devices and software are used, how important will the "openness" of health systems be?
10. Will the developments of home automation move from a permanent place in the house to the bodies of care consumers?

If you would like to see other questions answered, ... your suggestions are welcome!

EPD20 and EPD20wiki: happy collab!

Inspired by #TEDxMaastricht, a group of Dutch healthcare professionals are co-operating to describe a Electronic Healthcare Record 2.0 wiki.

Keep an eye on http://www.epd20.nl the following days.

The LinkedIn group is here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/EPD20wiki-3858209

Humbled that the info from the open wikimap will be used (with input from @michlr & @icmcc: http://www.mindmeister.com/nl/87194521/wwepd)

Already certain the end result will be of very high and compassionate quality.

The momentum is here!

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Will the iPod Nano watch impress the healthcrowd?

Easy to use
Easy to wear
Convenience for the win.

And it doesn't look like a medical (or other stigmatizing) device. Acceptance is guaranteed because such a shiny device is a 'wannahave'.

I wonder how long it will take before you can use Facetime on it.
With a GPS inside you will 'warned' when a friend is near, when you should get medicine from a nearby pharmacy, which subway to take, ...
You could communicate with relatives, doctors, ...
Notifications will appear when to take your medicine, when to go to the doctor, ...

And the real winner would be to integrate different monitoring solutions.

Source: GottaBeMobile -> iPod Nano as a watch is awesome, but does not impress the ladies

HIMSS 2011 in Storify

What damage could a Healthphone do?

If Garmin can sell a GPS that can do voice too,

alas not very successful,

what are the chances of a health monitoring device 'that can do voice' too?

I imagine a ruggedized device with long battery life,

large + bright touchscreen, a decent camera, accelerometer, GPS 

and -most important- the equivalent of a Swiss Knife in connectivity: bluetooth, zigbee, ant, IR, Wi-Fi, NFC, barcode, RFID, ...

Should consider the device as a medical Toughbook, but vastly improved and much smaller.

I'm on the lookout!

Image -> Imprint Talk (have a look at their tripple flip design too)

WESC or Louis Vuitton in the wireless sensor industry

Recently I was looking at 2 mhealth business plans, in particular the parts about sensor design.

The sensors should be wearable to guarantee permanent monitoring.

What struck me was that both companies were looking at "patient acceptance" as a HUGE hurdle for sensor sales.

Looking at the design of their devices, I understood their problem better: "They are UGLY!!!".

The devices had that typical "designed by a medical professional from the former USSR" signature.

If you want to solve patient acceptance, let Louis Vuitton or WESC take care of your design.

The burden of being sick and the necessity to be monitored can be worsened by making you wear ugly or uncool devices, especially with children.

Parents want their sick kids to grow up like 'normal' children.

If you can give these children a sensor that is cool to wear, this coolness might even 'lighten' the situation a bit for that child.

All types of wearable, unobtrusive sensors will have a great future because of simplicity and ease of mind.

Nick Hunn already gave fine examples like doorknobs and toothbrushes for monitoring, but why don't we also use helmets, clothing, wigs, earphones, scarfs, seats, ...?

I'm convinced that if you trow in more designers, this will make the sickness easier to wear (ha!).

Fashionistas for healthcare!