This event aims to bring together those with experience of Telecare and Telehealth and those with sensor technology and solutions to establish the state of the art and to discuss future opportunities.

The Assisted Living Innovation Platform (ALIP) is one of several innovation platforms, funded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), to address areas of priority to UK society which also represent business opportunities.

Under ALIP, a five year programme of activity is now underway to address the issue of the aging population and the resulting burden of this demographic upon health care providers. Together with an increase in the numbers of people requiring long-term medical care and supervision, the aging population will soon place significant and growing demands upon health provision in the UK. This is a concern throughout the developed world and solutions which can benefit both the sustainable provision of healthcare and business opportunity are widely sought by many governments and private healthcare providers, thus there is a global opportunity for business growth in this area.

Central to the ALIP programme is a Knowledge Transfer activity (ALIPKT) to ensure existing knowledge is disseminated, best practice shared and future needs are captured and responded to.

Technological challenges may be found in relation to the provision of telecare / telehealth and telemedicine (or an ‘eHealth’ system) and already it is apparent that issues around the security and reliability of telecommunications networks, standardisation and network coverage within and outside the home are key areas requiring research and innovation. The latest R&D programme from ALIP ‘Smart Care in a Distributed Environment’ is looking into this aspect and while it is hoped that existing telecoms and digital information platforms may be utilised, there is little vision as yet as to the potential capability and interoperability with home and personal sensor networks.

A recent TSB call resulted in nine collaborative R&D programmes looking at User Centred Design and Home Based Systems. These projects include sensor technology requirements, some of which may require technology or product development. The call was targeted at near-term R&D to explore opportunities for bringing near to market technologies together to meet a growing demand for electronic assistive care, based on clearly defined market need.

The ‘business end’ of any system, within or outside the home environment, will require environmental, biological, physiological and other sensor signals to be collected, and indeed pre-processed, before being transmitted over the new telecommunications structures, to enable the required information about patient wellbeing, location and other situational information to be shared by the health and care providers.

As the market develops for eHealth applications, it is likely that significant gaps in sensor capability, functionality and system integration will present themselves as the technology and new user demands move forward. It is certain that a key aspect for development and adoption of sensor technology in this area is the linking of users with solution providers.

This event aims to bring together those with experience of Telecare and Telehealth and those with sensor technology and solutions to establish what can be done now (state-of-the-art), share that experience but also to discuss future opportunities.

More information and registration is available from the Health KTN.