Posts Tagged ‘care facilities’
The Future of U.S. Healthcare, by Barry Bittman, MD
11/18/2011
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IBM Software Aims to Extend Seniors’ Independent Living
11/18/2011
IBM Software Aids Research Aimed at Extending Seniors’ Independent Living
EDMONTON, Alberta and MARKHAM, Ontario, Nov. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — [CASCON]
IBM today announced its software is being used to correlate data from sensors capturing patient activity and replicate that in a virtual world with avatars that represent the elderly subjects in a unique pilot aimed at providing health researchers and students with insights on how to care for Canada’s aging population.
Since June, 2011, University of Alberta researchers in collaboration with Edmonton’s Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital have been using IBM software to study elderly clients who volunteer to stay in a model, self-contained “independent living suite” at the facility. The suite is instrumented with sensors and equipped with smart devices collecting information about their daily activities.
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Stratus Video Call Center is like a Virtual Waiting Room
11/09/2011
As healthcare providers gear up for telehealth, they’ll face new issues such as 24×7 remote monitoring and the need to support virtual doctor visits by telepresence over the Internet. I wrote before here and here, there must be compatibility among different video systems, including the enterprise class-systems in hospitals and consumer-class systems in PC & mobile devices.
Until today, the two prominent solutions I knew about were Vidyo and a Lifesize Communications technology called ClearSea. Both are cloud-based services that translate between incompatible video systems, but now there’s another option.
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The Hazards of Hospitals (an infographic)
09/13/2011
Why US Hospitals aren’t nearly as Safe as you think
The infographic below is under a Creative Commons license. Here are some highlights:
We all think of the hospital as a place we go to get better. But hospitals in the United States are making people sicker at alarming rates. Between overtired interns, germ-covered doctors, and haphazard record keeping, you might find yourself in more trouble than you were when you checked in.
Some of the statistics presented include:
- You’re 30,000 times more likely to die from a hospital visit than a plane crash.
- 1 in 5 patients suffer harm from medical errors.
- 1.7 million infections are contracted in hospitals each year.
- 99,000 die from them.
- More die from infections each year than from car accidents, breast cancer or aids.
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Mayo Clinic’s Healthy Aging & Independent Living Lab
09/13/2011
Mayo Clinic Creates Healthy Aging and Independent Living Lab
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation (CFI) is pleased to announce a new “living lab” within the Charter House, a continuing care retirement community in Rochester. Charter House has 400 residents and is physically located in Rochester and physically connected to Mayo Clinic. Rochester is one of the nation’s best cities in which to reside, according to Money Magazine.
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Alternative Solutions for Funding Long Term Care
06/29/2011
As we age, there’s less need for life insurance and more need for Long Term Care insurance. This guest article describes converting a life policy into long term care. Some say long term care is only justified if you have enough assets to protect. And can’t we rely on home healthcare instead of expensive institutional care? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Wealth … Care Planning
Driven by crisis, alternative solutions emerge to pay for long term care
by Chris Orestis, Life Care Funding Group
On February 4th, 2011, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a dire warning in a speech before a gathering of top financial policy reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “The two most important driving forces for the federal budget are the aging of the U.S. population and rapidly rising health-care costs,” said Bernanke. He warned that the costs of caring for the rapidly growing population of seniors in the U.S. will be an unsustainable burden for the U.S. budget and a constant impediment to economic recovery. As 10,000 Baby Boomers a day started turning 65 on January 1, 2011; the big three entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, are all in the red and creating havoc for government budgets at the federal and state levels. This has become the number one concern of the Federal Reserve about the U.S. economy.
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MEDCottage: a place for mom
05/23/2011
MEDCottage introduces new way to care for loved ones
Home health care can avoid higher costs of institutional care in a nursing home or assisted living facility, but making space may be an issue. Fortunately, there are many options. You can give grandma the spare bedroom, convert a garage into living space, remodel the home, or add a small cottage on your property.
That last option is the idea behind MEDCottage, a charming modular home that serves as a “mini-medical facility.” It’s designed like a deluxe trailer for the elderly, but it doesn’t look like a trailer. I like the idea of relying on experts to integrate various systems, where the combined value is greater than the sum benefits of each part.
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You Really Are Paying a lot More For Health Care
05/16/2011
Julie Rovner posted this article on the NPR Health blog, but she didn’t include my reader comments, so I’m summarizing key points here and adding my comments afterwards.
- The good news – Health costs rose 7.3% last year, which was the slowest rate in more than a decade but still nearly 5 times faster than the Consumer Price Index.
- The bad news – Since 2002, the annual health care cost for American families has more than doubled from about $9,000 to over $19,000.
So what’s driving the increases? It’s not Obama Care, the new federal health law.
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Verizon, Healthsense Bring Solutions to Assisted Living
05/02/2011
Alliance Will Promote Cost-Effective Monitoring and Response Systems
NEW YORK (4/27/2011) – Verizon and Healthsense will help bring cost-effective wellness and health monitoring services to planned senior-living communities, under an agreement announced today. [mHealthTalk editor: Healthsense also provides solutions for home healthcare.]
The new services will be offered to senior or assisted-living housing developments utilizing Verizon’s advanced FiOS all-fiber-optic network. Healthsense’s Wi-Fi based technology systems will provide increased independence for residents and added assurance that they are safe.
Home Health Care: What to consider
04/01/2011
By Dr. Robert Schreiber and Pat Kelleher (reprinted with permission of Massachusetts Medical Society)
Our population is rapidly aging. By 2030, nearly 72 million people in the U.S. will be 65 or older. And not only are we aging faster, we’re also living longer: A report just released by the Centers for Disease Control charted U.S. life expectancy in excess of 78 years, the highest it’s ever been.
Additionally, chronic diseases, such as diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer’s, are affecting more and more people. Whatever the medical condition, whatever one’s age, however frail one may be, the desire remains strong to stay in one’s home, living as independently as possible. Home care may provide some help.
Currently, about 8 million Americans require some kind of medical care in the home, a number that will jump dramatically as people live longer, want to stay at home avoiding nursing homes or other living arrangements, and pressure mounts to control soaring health care costs. If you’ve thought of home care for yourself or a loved one, here are some things to consider.
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