Telecare eNewsletter October 2013 - 8th anniversary edition

Welcome to the October 2013 newsletter from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) Knowledge Transfer Network and the Telecare Learning and Improvement Network. We are grateful to the HealthTech & Medicines KTN and the TSB's Assisted Living Innovation Platform for providing newsletter funding for another year enabling us to continue to provide the most comprehensive newsletter available serving the telecare, telehealth, mobile health, digital health and assisted living communities.

Launched October 2005, our free monthly newsletter is now distributed to 48,000 subscribers in the UK and worldwide via e-mail and archived at www.telecarelin.org.uk. You can also find highlights on Prezi (monthly) or Rebelmouse (daily) or by following Mike Clark on Twitter (@clarkmike). With over 800 news and events links over the last month, we hope that you find this newsletter useful.

It has been a busy month with continuing questions about the sustainability of the NHS and social care with A&E pressures, GP access arrangements, 15 minute home care visits, handling NHS complaints, care home and hospital safety. A new Chief Executive of NHS England has been appointed (Simon Stevens takes up his post in April 2014). The integration pilots and the first round of successful tech fund bids are due to be announced. Preparations for the Integration Transformation Fund are underway and Parliament has been scrutinising the Care Bill which will mean new assessments for 500,000 self-funders. There is funding for some technology programmes, A&E/winter pressures and improving GP access (including possible telehealth options). Scotland has launched a Digital Health Institute. Major conferences in health and social care have been held recently with more technology-based events to come during November starting with Scotland's Telecare & Telehealth Week featuring the European Telemedicine Conference and then followed by the TSA, EHI Live, HSJ and RSM events.

The newsletter contains a list of KTN/ALIP activities, conferences and workshops from the UK and Europe over the coming weeks as well as news from the UK and around the world. For weekly news, updates and information, you can register with the Technology Strategy Board, ALIP group and the dallas sub-group. You can follow the dallas programme on Twitter at @dallas_connect. 3 Million Lives is on LinkedIn. You can also access a Twitter Stream via the TelecareLIN website.

Additional links supplement (over 800 this month) - doc, pdf formats