Helpdesk4Seniors

Wii Fit brings yoga poses to couch potatoes

2008-02-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has ever gone a few rounds of virtual boxing, or pitched a few virtual innings, knows that fitness sometimes counts when playing the Nintendo Wii. Now Nintendo is taking gaming-exercise combination a step further, with plans to bring a fitness version of the Wii console -- the Wii Fit -- to U.S. stores in May.

Key to the device is a weight-and-motion sensing Balance Board, used for activities including aerobics, stretches, yoga, and games.

While a game console is unlikely to replace the expertise of trainers, aerobics or yoga instructors, and in fact may bring on some poor form and habits for some users, the Wii Fit could help thousands make the health-critical connection between fitness and fun. And that's all good.

Post from Good Morning Silicon Valley

Don't be like Homer: You're brain needs a workout too...

2008-02-06T09:08:00.000-08:00

The US Car Care Council released a list of tips on how to take care of your car and “save big money at the pump in 2008.”

You may not have paid much attention to this announcement. Yes, it’s important to save gas these days; but, it’s not big news that good maintenance habits will improve the performance of a car, and extend its life.

If we can all agree on the importance of maintaining our cars that get us around town, what about maintaining our brains sitting behind the wheel?

A spate of recent news coverage on brain fitness and “brain training” has missed an important constituency: younger people. Recent advancements in brain science have as tremendous implications for teenagers and adults of all ages as they do for seniors.

In a recent conversation with neuroscientist Yaakov Stern of Columbia University, he related how surprised he was when, years ago, a reporter from Seventeen magazine requested an interview. The reporter told Dr. Stern that he wanted to write an article to motivate kids to stay in school and not to drop out, in order to start building their Cognitive Reserve early and age more gracefully.

What is the Cognitive Reserve?

Emerging research since the 90s from the past decade shows that individuals who lead mentally stimulating lives, through their education, their jobs, and also their hobbies, build a “Cognitive Reserve” in their brains. Only a few weeks ago another study reinforced the value of intellectualy demanding jobs.

Stimulating the brain can literally generate new neurons and strengthen their connections which results in better brain performance and in having a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s symptoms. Studies suggest that people who exercise their mental muscles throughout their lives have a 35-40% less risk of manifesting Alzheimer’s.

As astounding as these insights may be, most Americans still devote more time to changing the oil, taking a car to a mechanic, or washing it, than thinking about how to maintain, if not improve, their brain performance.

Further, better brain scanning techniques like fMRI (glossary) are allowing scientists to investigate healthy live brains for the first time in history. Two of the most important findings from this research are that our brains are plastic (meaning they not only create new neurons but also can change their structure) throughout a lifetime and that frontal lobes are the most plastic area. Frontal lobes, the part of our brains right behind the forehead, controls "executive functions" --- which determine our ability to pay attention, plan for the future and direct behavior toward achieving goals. They are critical for adapting to new situations. We exercise them best by learning and mastering new skills.

This part of the brain is delicate: our frontal lobes wait until our mid to late 20s to fully mature. They are also the first part of our brain to start to decline, usually by middle age.

In my view, not enough young and middle-aged people are benefiting from this emerging research, since it has been perceived as something “for seniors.” Granted, there are still many unknowns in the world of brain fitness and cognitive training, we need more research, better assessments and tools. But, this does not mean we cannot start caring for our brains today.
Recent studies have shown a tremendous variability in how well people age and how, to a large extent, our actions influence our rate of brain improvement and/or decline. The earlier we begin the better. And it is never too late.

What can we do to maintain our brain, especially the frontal lobes? Focus on four pillars of brain health: physical exercise, a balanced diet, stress management, and brain exercise. Stress management is important since stress has been shown to actually kill neurons and reduce the rate of creation of new ones. Brain exercises range from low-tech (i.e. meditation, mastering new complex skills, lifelong learning and engagement) to high-tech (i.e. using the growing number of brain fitness software programs).

I know, this is starting to sound like those lists we all know are good for us but we actually don’t do. Let me make it easier by proposing a new New Year Resolution for 2008: every time you wash your car or have it washed in 2008, ask yourself, "What have I done lately to maintain my brain?"

Repost from SharpBrains

Keeping An Eye On Grandma Over the Internet

2008-01-07T15:37:00.001-08:00

Repost from TechCrunch
There are probably hundreds of new products launching at CES this week, but one that caught my eye has nothing to do with LCD screens or mobile ad platforms. A Sunnyvale, California startup called 4HomeMedia announced the availability of a broadband home health monitoring service called Home HealthPoint. It provides a way for family members or other caregivers to monitor an elderly person’s activities at home (through a box that talks to a broadband modem and sensors in the house) and receive alerts if something is amiss.

According to the press release:
By creating a passive monitoring network around a senior in their normal home setting, both family members and professional care-givers can log into a personalized Web page and get historical trend data, real-time status updates, and proactive alerts about the health and well-being for that monitored elder

The recommended starter kit for the IL service includes the Home HealthPoint, three motion detectors, and an emergency pendant. The motion detectors are strategically placed around the home during the professional installation in the bedroom, at the entrance to the primary bathroom, and in the main trafficked area such as a foyer or living room. Additional sensor devices such as additional motion detectors, access contacts on the refrigerator or doors, a smart pillbox, or IP cameras can be utilized to supplement the monitoring data sets being produced within the home.

Grandma can also plug in medical devices such as a digital weight scale, a blood-pressure cuff, or a glucose meter. The startup envisions this service being sold by broadband providers like cable or phone companies for an extra $30 to $100 a month, “a bargain in comparison to the on average $72,000 annual fee for transitioning a senior into an assisted living facility.”

That’s right, folks. Put an emergency pendant on Grandma, set up those motion detectors, and you can put off the nursing home for another three to five years. Want to check in on her without actually, you know, calling her? Just check the Webcam.

I can’t decide whether this represents a step forward or backwards for civilization. On the one hand, there is no doubt that something like this could definitely help improve healthcare for the elderly. Many live at home alone and an early warning system (Is Grandma eating regularly? Is she taking her pills? Has she been in bed all day?) could be a true life saver.

On the other hand, checking on whether an elderly parent is functioning normally is not the same as checking to see if your home alarm went off or you remembered to turn off the lights. (4HomeMedia also offers home-automation and remote media-management software based on the same technology). There is a limit to how much remote monitoring can be relied upon when it comes to healthcare. This is certainly better than no monitoring at all, but I wonder if it will result in giving people a false sense of security or making some elderly folks feel even more isolated than they do today.

Senior citizens embrace technology

2007-12-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

Verne Biehl, 79, first learned to play the piano when he was 12 years old, but he took lessons only a year and later regretted not being able to play well.
Nearly 67 years have passed since he first had an opportunity to return to study the instrument he always loved.

Except, now his lessons are taught on a digital piano.

Technology has caught up with Verne Biehl and he is taking it in stride.

"The digital piano is interesting, a little different than a straight piano,” said this Marietta resident. It feels much different than my manual one.”

For millions of Americans who grew up without computers or the Internet, cell phones, iPods, global positioning systems, digital cameras (remember the flash bulb?) Nintendo or even a television, catching up with technology can be a daunting challenge.

“If you don't learn about it, you feel like you've been left behind,” said Karen Burfield of Marietta. “I'm just learning about the computer. My three daughters are encouraging me. I do e-mail and look things up.”

Burfield and Biehl are among a steadily growing army of seniors who are eagerly accepting the challenge and diving into the technical “soup.”

Both take classes at the O'Neill Senior Center in Marietta, introducing them to new technologies and to sharpen their basic skills.

For Burfield, the handwriting was on the wall when the doctor's office where she had worked for years, suddenly turned up with computers. It was do or die.

“I had to get on the computer to look things up,” she said. “I learned the basics.”
After she retired in 2003, Burfield joined a creative writing class at O'Neill Center and used the computer to help facilitate her writing.

“I'm really still just learning about it,” she said. “It helps me with writing. The one thing I hate is when something goes wrong and I have to ask for help.”

Read the entire article at The Marietta Times

Frail seniors embrace home monitoring

2007-12-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

When John Fowlkes’s adult daughter suggested installing an electronic monitoring system in his apartment to oversee his well-being from afar, “I was very skeptical,” he says. To Fowlkes, 86, who has an active social life including an 80-year-old girlfriend, the idea evoked thoughts of Big Brother.

Mindful that a younger friend had fallen at home and lain on the floor for hours before anyone came to help, Fowlkes, of Raleigh, N.C., gave in. To his surprise, he found the setup “makes you feel more secure.”
Overseeing the aged from afar is a hot issue for working caregivers, and the technology needed to do so is available. But policy makers and others have long fretted that seniors would resist electronic monitoring as an invasion of privacy.

Now, Big Brother has arrived — and seniors are rolling out the welcome mat. As vendors make in-home monitoring systems widely available, seniors are mounting little resistance, and many are embracing the gadgetry as an aid to remaining independent.

Home-monitoring customers total a few thousand nationwide, according to half a dozen monitoring companies I surveyed. The most common systems use wireless motion or contact sensors on doorways, windows, walls, ceilings, cabinets, refrigerators, appliances or beds to track seniors’ movements. Temperature sensors gauge heat and air conditioning. If an elderly person enters the bathroom and doesn’t come out, or other typical activity patterns aren’t recorded in the home, word can be sent to family members, 24-hour response workers or both. The systems also offer hand-held or wearable “panic buttons.”

The QuietCare system used by Fowlkes is monitored by response workers. His daughter, Alisa Washington, who lives nearby, receives e-mail updates several times a day at work. She says it gives her “much greater peace of mind.”

Seniors draw the line at some kinds of surveillance. Many protest against the presence of video cameras, says DR. Majd Alwan, who conducted several small studies of monitoring systems as a professor at the University of Virginia. They see motion and contact sensors as less invasive, says Alwan, now director of the Center for Aging Services Technologies, Washington, D.C., a nonprofit research group.

See CantonRep.com

Brainpower now obsolete thanks to GPS and iTunes

2007-11-26T09:57:00.000-08:00

The gurus seek bliss amid mountaintop solitude and serenity in the meditative trance, but I, grasshopper, have achieved the oneness with the universe that is known as pure externalization.

I have melded my mind with the heavens, communed with the universal consciousness, and experienced the inner calm that externalization brings, and it all started because I bought a car with a GPS.

Like many men, I quickly established a romantic attachment to my GPS. I found comfort in her tranquil and slightly Anglophilic voice. I felt warm and safe following her thin blue line. More than once I experienced her mercy, for each of my transgressions would be greeted by nothing worse than a gentle, "Make a U-turn if possible."

After a few weeks, it occurred to me that I could no longer get anywhere without her. Any trip slightly out of the ordinary had me typing the address into her system and then blissfully following her satellite-fed commands. I found that I was quickly shedding all vestiges of geographic knowledge.

It was unnerving at first, but then a relief. Since the dawn of humanity, people have had to worry about how to get from here to there. Precious brainpower has been used storing directions, and memorizing turns. I myself have been trapped at dinner parties at which conversation was devoted exclusively to the topic of commuter routes.

My GPS goddess liberated me from this drudgery. She enabled me to externalize geographic information from my own brain to a satellite brain, and you know how it felt? It felt like nirvana.
Through that experience I discovered the Sacred Order of the External Mind. I realized I could outsource those mental tasks I didn't want to perform. Life is a math problem, and I had a calculator.

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I like.
Personal information? I've externalized it. I'm no longer clear on where I end and my BlackBerry begins. When I want to look up my passwords or contact my friends I just hit a name on my directory. I read in a piece by Clive Thompson in Wired that a third of the people under 30 can't remember their own phone number. Their smart phones are smart, so they don't need to be. Today's young people are forgoing memory before they even have a chance to lose it.

Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic than ever. It's merely my autonomy that I'm losing.

I have relinquished control over my decisions to the universal mind. I have fused with the knowledge of the cybersphere, and entered the bliss of a higher metaphysic. As John Steinbeck nearly wrote, a fella ain't got a mind of his own, just a little piece of the big mind - one mind that belongs to everybody. Then it don't matter, Ma. I'll be everywhere, around in the dark. Wherever there is a network, I'll be there. Wherever there's a TiVo machine making a sitcom recommendation based on past preferences, I'll be there. Wherever there's a Times reader selecting articles based on the most e-mailed list, I'll be there. I'll be in the way Amazon links purchasing Dostoyevsky to purchasing garden furniture. And when memes are spreading, and humiliation videos are shared on Facebook - I'll be there, too.

I am one with the external mind. Om.

Holiday technology gifts for the 65+ seniors

2007-11-21T10:36:00.000-08:00

Tech pundits weren't surprised when Nintendo's Wii videogame console became an instant hit with kids last year. But Grandma and Grandpa playing Wii games for hours in retirement homes across the country? A complete shock.

But Nintendo says the Wii's popularity among the over-65 crowd wasn't totally unexpected because the game, which simulates sports like bowling and tennis, is "intuitive ... not intimidating," said Perrin Kaplan, vice-president of marketing and corporate affairs at Nintendo of America.

Yep. Make it super-easy to use, and even the most tech-phobic seniors will come. The Wii console is the size of a remote control, and seniors swing it in front of a computerised image of a bowling alley or tennis court.

Erickson Retirement Communities discovered that Wii games were fun and good exercise for seniors in its retirement homes, because swinging the remote simulates motions people use when playing for real. With Wii tennis, "it's so hard for you not to move and simulate your tennis strokes," said Antonio Galvan, a program manager at an Erickson facility in Naperville.
In addition to Wii, YouTube, that bastion of quirky, homemade videos aimed at hipsters, has become another place for oldsters to hang out. Look for "senior citizen" on YouTube, and more than 1,000 videos pop up.

One video, titled "Senior Citizens Bah Hum Bug!," is a monologue by a senior pontificating about the bad rap he and his peers get for being old. Another video, "Gulfport Senior Citizens Harmonica Club," shows seniors tooting with glee. Erickson also uploaded a video of its residents playing Wii bowling.

"It's fun to watch seniors in competition," Galvan said. "The competitive vibe is very much alive. It's fun to watch the trash talking.”

There are also a slew of companies making tech products just for seniors. Jitterbug, a cellphone with large key pads, and Tek Partner, an oversized remote control that's "easy to use, easy to see, impossible to lose," according to its ad, are a few products targeted to the elderly.
Joyce Roberts, 63, isn't technically a senior yet, but she got a Jitterbug last May because the keys on her old cellphone were too tiny to see and she didn't need all the bells and whistles it came with. Jitterbug is "super-simple," said the Del Mar, California, resident. "I just wanted a phone. I didn't want to play games, take pictures or surf the Web."

Eons, a social networking site for "adults lovin' life on the flip side of 50," focuses on baby boomer concerns, and aging is a big topic. Founder and Chief Executive Jeff Taylor said the site's longevity calculator is its most popular feature. A user answers 40 questions online, and, based on the user's current health and lifestyle, the calculator spits out the age he or she will live to. The calculator also offers suggestions on how to become healthier.

While many seniors may shun technology, some take to it avidly. Richard Anderson, 74, practically lives online and is more tech-savvy than some people half his age. The Florida retiree banks online, files taxes online, books travel online and views football games on his computer while watching another game on TV. He also uses Google's Picasa2 and Microsoft's Picture It to design his own greeting cards from digital photos. And Internet phone service Skype keeps him connected to family in Virginia and Minnesota.

Experts say more tech-loving seniors like Anderson are on the horizon as baby boomers, who are used to using technology at work and at home reach retirement age, setting the stage for a huge number of older tech users. Andrew Carle, director of the Assisted Living/Senior Housing Administration programme at George Mason University in Fairfax., said, "Older boomers will seek tech, and they will expect it."

From Sify

New Social Sites Cater to People of a Certain Age

2007-10-22T17:05:00.000-07:00

Older people are sticky.

That is the latest view from Silicon Valley. Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites aimed at baby boomers and graying computer users.

The sites have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya’s Mom, Boomj, and Boomertown. They look like Facebook — with wrinkles.

And they are seeking to capitalize on what investors say may be a profitable characteristic of older Internet users: they are less likely than youngsters to flit from one trendy site to the next.

“Teens are tire kickers — they hang around, cost you money and then leave,” said Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and author of the blog “Infectious Greed.” Where Friendster was once the hot spot, Facebook and MySpace now draw the crowds of young people online.

“The older demographic has a bunch of interesting characteristics,” Mr. Kedrosky added, “not the least of which is that they hang around.”

This prospective and relative stickiness is helping drive a wave of new investment into boomer and older-oriented social networking sites that offer like-minded (and like-aged) individuals discussion and dating forums, photo-sharing, news and commentary, and chatter about diet, fitness and health care.

Last week, VantagePoint Ventures, an early investor in MySpace, announced that it had led a $16.5 million round of financing for Multiply, a social networking site aimed at people who are settled.

In August, Shasta Ventures led a $4.8 million financing round for TeeBeeDee, a site coming out of its test stage this month. The name is short for “To Be Determined” (as in: just because you’re not trolling for a mate on MySpace doesn’t mean your life is over.)

Also in August, Johnson & Johnson spent $10 million to $20 million to acquire Maya’s Mom, a social networking site for parents, according to a person briefed on the deal. The site has been in existence about a year.

Social networking has so far focused mainly on businesspeople and young people because they are tech-savvy and are treasured by Madison Avenue.

But there are 78 million boomers — roughly three times the number of teenagers — and most of them are Internet users who learned computer skills in the workplace. Indeed, the number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a market research firm.

TeeBeeDee’s founder is Robin Wolaner, who in 1987 created Parenting magazine. That year, at least seven magazines focused on being a parent were started, and Ms. Wolaner said she was seeing the same sudden recognition of a need for Internet publishers to respond to the demands of older Americans.

She came up with the idea for the site, she said, “when I was sitting around with friends and we said, ‘We’re not going to hang out at the AARP site. What is there for us?’ ” (Plus, she said, she wanted to find a community where she could discuss her interest in getting an eye lift).

“There’s a recognition that this generation now uses the Internet just like younger people,” she said. “The one thing this generation hasn’t done yet is network online.”

Read the entire article on NYTimes.com

Respecting, and liking, these elders

2007-10-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

USC gerontology students find that living with Kingsley Manor's senior citizens is anything but old hat.

When USC graduate student Shaun Rushforth wants his gerontology studies to come to life, all he has to do is open the door to his East Hollywood apartment and walk down the hallway. The very quiet hallway.

That's because Rushforth and two other USC students are the youngest residents (by at least four decades) at Kingsley Manor Care Center, a facility that otherwise houses 260 senior citizens in various stages of independence and nursing care. The young people live there under an unusual arrangement that complements their academic research about the elderly and offers a terrific deal in Los Angeles' expensive rental market.

"It's like living in the dorms without all the parties, and everyone is over 65. It's great," said Rushforth, 27, who is considering a career in geriatric medicine.

In exchange for 16 hours a week of duties, such as teaching tai chi or running a bingo game, the students from USC's Davis School of Gerontology get a free room or apartment about a half-hour from campus and all the dining hall meals they can fit into their schedule. But more important, they say, they learn crucial lessons for careers -- and about their own lives and mortality.

Off-duty, they may help a disoriented senior find her way back to the right room. Sometimes they coach an eager septuagenarian on the mysteries of e-mail and the Internet. Often they spend time just listening to someone review the ups and downs of a long life.

"They're learning ahead of time what it's like to be old," retired middle school teacher Roger Goulet, 90, said of the students.

"There's a big spectrum of old age here, and they can learn what mistakes to avoid in life."

Read the entire article on LAtimes.com

Local community assists seniors independent living with telecare

2007-10-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Telecare can support vulnerable people in the community so they have better safety, care, choice and independence in their own homes.
Telecare uses discreet sensors and communications technology, which can be installed in the home to provide remote support to people who are vulnerable. It can include detectors or monitors such as bed sensors, motion or falls sensors, fire and gas detectors that trigger a warning to a response centre.

Telecare has the potential to support individuals to live at home and to complement traditional care. It can also give carers more personal freedom and reassurance.

Cllr Maureen Cummings, Cabinet Member for Adults and Health, said: “We want to do all we can to support vulnerable and older people by giving them more opportunities to be independence in their own homes.”

Read the entire article on eGov Monitor

Microsoft Online Health Records With HealthVault

2007-10-06T15:10:00.000-07:00

Microsoft launched HealthVault in beta, a free online repository where anyone can keep their personal health records. Meanwhile, Google Health has yet to launch, having recently lost its leader Adam Bosworth.

With HealthVault, you can import your health records from your doctors, hospitals, labs, prescription drug plans, and other healthcare providers. You can also type them in yourself, or upload data from personal health monitoring devices such as glucose or blood-pressure monitors. The site also incorporates a health-specific search engine like Healthline’s (here is the results page for “glucose“), and lets you save your searches. Microsoft plans to make money through health-related search ads, but says it won’t target those ads to any personal data in someone’s stored medical record. Access to the site will require a Windows Live ID and a password that you can share with healthcare providers. Patient privacy will obviously be a major concern here, and fears of compromising it will likely be the biggest hurdle to adoption among both consumers and their doctors.

But it is worth trying to overcome that hurdle. Getting people to embrace digital personal health records is a Holy Grail for both the healthcare and technology industries. By making health records accessible on the Web to both patients and their doctors, better tracking of medical conditions and quicker responses to changes in those conditions could yield vast improvements in healthcare outcomes. Dangerous symptoms could be spotted earlier by doctors, while at the same time patients would have the information necessary to better take care of themselves. A shift to widespread use of online personal health records is the first step needed to change the focus of the healthcare system from one of constantly treating full-blown ailments to preventing them in the first place.

Source: TechCrunch

"How to" use BitTorrent on a Mac, a peer to peer video file sharing network

2007-10-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

Click here to see the video

"How to" use GMaps, a free directory with directions

2007-10-02T13:49:00.000-07:00

"How to" use YouTube, a free internet video hosting platform

2007-10-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

Seniors may get mixed signals

2007-09-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON — Elderly people may be the most vulnerable to losing television reception when the nation's broadcasters go digital in less than 18 months, members of Congress and advocates for seniors say.

A study in July showed that a disproportionate number of people who rely on "over-the-air” signals through an antenna are senior citizens. And without a coordinated national campaign to educate people about the digital transition, set for Feb. 17, 2009, millions of elderly people could be cut off from television.

"We all need to do a lot more outreach to prepare our seniors,” Jonathan Adelstein, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, told a Senate panel last week.

Adelstein said if a massive public education campaign isn't launched quickly and uninformed people lose television reception, "we're going to have one of the biggest outrages this country has ever seen. It will be a very difficult day in the history of American broadcasting if we don't turn this around.”

Read the entire article on NewsOK.com

WBM Foundation

2007-09-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

WBM Foundation, a non-profit assisting seniors with lonliness and social isolation teaching them to play with the Wii

"How to" use a computer "mouse"

2007-09-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Elderly 'addicted' to Nintendo Wii at care home

2007-09-16T10:31:00.001-07:00

Flossie Chambers, 89, playing ten pin bowling

Pensioners aged 80 and above at the Sunrise Senior Living Centre in Edgbaston are now hooked to the Nintendo Wii, the latest hi-tech video games console.

Taking it in turns with the hand-held controls, the pensioners go head to head against one another in the various games.

The console, which costs about £200, reacts to body motion. The games require each player to carry out appropriate actions depending on what they want their character to do.

For example Wii Tennis, one of the most popular games, requires players to swing their controls as if they were holding a racquet. The golf game works in a similar way.

The craze at the home all started three weeks ago when one of the chefs brought in a console belonging to his son and lent it to staff for the weekend.

Residents, who are aged between 80 and 103, were so enthralled by the games that they demanded that staff purchase one immediately.

Diane Rudge, the executive director at the centre, said: "They were absolutely hooked.
"They're up of their armchairs and moving about and there's a real team spirit.
"We're going to invest in a whole library of games so they don't get bored."

Bowling has proved to be the most popular game at the home where 90-year-old Barrie Edgar is emerging as a keen star.

Mr Edgar said: "It's fiercely competitive. We're all addicts and it's really bridged the generation gap.

"I'm so glad they got us one of own."

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

My dog

2007-09-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Collective Intelligence: Include The Everyone for Success

2007-09-08T10:04:00.000-07:00

Want to be more productive at solving complex problems in groups? Work better in teams? Utilize all of your resources at their fullest potential, no matter how different some individuals might be perceived to be? Maybe you should study the way some ants bury their dead, ways fireflies in some parts of the world light up in synchronization, or the way field honey bees fly from flower to flower, collecting pollen and sweet juices, or nectar to produce honey. Read on; I am serious!

Have you ever been in a meeting and hardly anyone talked? Maybe the few outgoing people were the only ones voicing their opinions. As you might be sitting back in the meeting and listening and thinking to yourself, my thought is not valuable because it is quite different than all the other ideas that are being brought up; so I do not speak up in fear of being different.
I’ll bet you do not know how much your different point of view helps to make the outcome better for all! Without your different perspective the complete group may fail because you followed the opinions of only a few in the group; right or wrong.

If you have a disability or other unique viewpoints on the topic in discussion, or project, or program you are working on, it makes your input even more crucial to produce the very best output possible. I might even argue that if you are disabled, or have other challenges your thoughts are more important, since others do not have your unique viewpoint to offer such help or guidance.

This is true with software or hardware development as well. You would not want to develop inferior software or hardware products that are not accessible or usable by all people. In this highly competitive global market it is best to not limit your customer base to only a portion of the world’s population allowing your competitors to gain an advantage in which you may never have the opportunity to catch up. Include people with disabilities, we are brimming with innovative ideas!

With so much room for improvements in the current approach to working together, some groups and organizations have started to look at nature for resolutions and new ideas. Nature has done well when many members interact with each other with no one person directing, like the ants, fireflies and bees I mentioned

Do you wonder how such positive collaboration can happen?

Have you ever heard of swarm, or collective intelligence?

Swarm, or collective intelligence in one definition; is interacting as one large, self-organized group of computers or groups of people with all individuals fully participating, without infrastructure limitations. This is an emergent behavior, where complex group actions arise from simple local rules.

From Stephen Strogatz: Who Cares About Fireflies? We see fantastic examples of synchrony in the natural world all around us. To give an example, there were persistent reports when the first Western travelers went to South East Asia, back to the time of Sir Francis Drake in the 1500s, of spectacular scenes along riverbanks, where thousands upon thousands of fireflies in the trees would all light up and go off simultaneously. These kinds of reports kept coming back to the West, and were published in scientific journals, and people who hadn't seen it couldn't believe it. Scientists said that this is a case of human misperception, that we're seeing patterns that don't exist, or that it's an optical illusion. How could the fireflies, which are not very intelligent creatures, manage to coordinate their flashings in such a spectacular and vast way?

The answer on how this can happen is swarm, or collective intelligence.
In the May 1, 2001, Harvard Business Review, Swarm Intelligence: A Whole New Way to Think about Business by Eric Bonabeau and Christopher Meyer talks about the following.
What do ants and bees have to do with business? A great deal, it turns out. Individually, social insects are only minimally intelligent, and their work together is largely self-organized and unsupervised. Yet collectively they're capable of finding highly efficient solutions to difficult problems and can adapt automatically to changing environments. Over the past 20 years, the authors and other researchers have developed rigorous mathematical models to describe this phenomenon, which has been dubbed "swarm intelligence," and they are now applying them to business. Their research has already helped several companies develop more efficient ways to schedule factory equipment, divide tasks among workers, organize people, and even plot strategy. Emulating the way ants find the shortest path to a new food supply, for example, has led researchers at Hewlett-Packard to develop software programs that can find the most efficient way to route phone traffic over a telecommunications network. Southwest Airlines has used a similar model to efficiently route cargo. To allocate labor, honeybees appear to follow one simple but powerful rule--they seem to specialize in a particular activity unless they perceive an important need to perform another function. Using that model, researchers at Northwestern University have devised a system for painting trucks that can automatically adapt to changing conditions. In the future, the authors speculate, a company might structure its entire business using the principles of swarm intelligence. The result, they believe, would be the ultimate self-organizing enterprise--one that could adapt quickly and instinctively to fast-changing markets.
Listen to NPR: How Ants Bury Their Dead by John Nielsen - All Things Considered, December 9, 2006, the weekly Science Out of the Box segment considers the well-ordered world of ants. Their knack for carefully stacking their dead has sent researchers scurrying to see if humans can learn lessons in efficiency from them.

Ants work together in large groups performing very complicated task with no one leader. They fight battles find food and stack their dead in intricate precise patterns; and re-stack them sorting them as they do so. This research is helping to build robots that have intelligence like ants, among many other very exciting projects.

At the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence they are bringing together faculty from across MIT to conduct research on how new communications technologies are changing the way people work together. They are collaborating with other educational institutions, organizations and individuals to better understand and find new ways to leverage collective intelligence.
Just a few of the factors that facilitate collective intelligence from MIT’s Handbook of Collective Intelligence.

Diversity
Shared vocabulary and other infrastructure
Awareness
Some of the factors that inhibit collective intelligence from MIT’s handbook.
Biases
Implementation issues

As you have read or listened, swarm or collective intelligence can be interactions between computer to computer, computer to people or people to people just to name a few of the possible interactions. I would like to focus our discussion on improving collective intelligence between people to people and people to computer.

Collective intelligence can facilitate increased productivity in community, global (multiple organizations and individuals) and corporate project, or program teams. Can aid if you do work in Diversity, looking to leverage all employees uniqueness’s effectively or work in Human Resources and you desire your highly skilled and valued workforce to be agile to allow your employees to use their talents when and where best needed at any particular moment. Explaining why it is essential to develop, maintain and procure accessible and usable applications with universal design following such standards as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and leveraging resources like the ones at Trace Research and Development Center and Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) special Interest Group on Accessible Computing to facilitate and allow all people to contribute equally and effectively. Such standards can leverage IT investments, save time, money and reduce duplication of efforts. It is best to leverage what nature has already perfected. People are just starting to understand and utilize techniques to improve outdated processes. Focus your efforts on actions that will facilitate collective intelligence and resolve any barriers which will inhibit your positive results!

If all people cannot equally participate fully with accessible and usable tools you are inhibiting collective intelligence. You need to create ways to facilitate collective intelligence so you can more easily find highly efficient solutions to your most difficult problems. Then you can adapt automatically to changing markets and environments with agility and grace. Make sure the disabled, or others with challenges can fully participate like all others efficiently. These individuals are your most valued path to your success in fully utilizing the benefits of collective intelligence.

Is anyone seeing results with swarm, or collective intelligence? Are you having implementation issues? What parts of your personal or professional life is this helping with? Do you see how it can help the disabled or others with special needs in their personal or professional life?
I look forward to hearing from you.

To read more about Swarm Behavior look at the excellent resources on Learn More - National Geographic Magazine.

by Bill Tipton: Contributing Author, Global Dialogue Centerhttp://www.globaldialoguecenter.com/

Google and Microsoft Look to Change Health Care

2007-08-14T19:40:00.000-07:00

In politics, every serious candidate for the White House has a health care plan. So too in business, where the two leading candidates for Web supremacy, Google and Microsoft, are working up their plans to improve the nation’s health care.

By combining better Internet search tools, the vast resources of the Web and online personal health records, both companies are betting they can enable people to make smarter choices about their health habits and medical care.

“What’s behind this is the mass consumerization of health information,” said Dr. David J. Brailer, the former health information technology coordinator in the Bush administration, who now heads a firm that invests in health ventures.

Read the whole article on The New York Times

Resco BrainGain

2007-08-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

Resco has released BrainGain a brain training application for Windows Mobile PDAs. What does BrainGain offer you?

You can train and test your memory, your analytical and calculation skills, and improve it significantly. The BrainGain training will also help you concentrate more and increase your brain reflection speed. You will find here simple but very effective brain training games and exercises like solving simple calculation, memory and analytical problems.

Video games are clicking with the senior center set

2007-07-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

Doris Meyer wasn't going to let a video game or those last three pins get the better of her.

The 70-year-old grandmother of four squared herself in front of the flat-screen TV, drew her arm back and -- crash! -- the last few pins toppled.

"You got it!" teammate Hal Wehner, 74, shouted from his motorized wheelchair.

Until recently, Meyer and Wehner hadn't bowled in years. But the two have taken up the sport again in the virtual world, regularly playing with

Nintendo's Wii video game in the lounge of the Cedar Crest retirement community in Pequannock.

It's a sign video games are catching on with the elderly.

In a partnership with Nintendo, Erickson Retirement Communities recently installed a few of the $250 Wii (pronounced "We") consoles in each of its 20 campuses nationwide.

"It's a marketing stunt to some extent, but it underscores that the Wii console is not just for the hard- core gamer," said industry analyst Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director for Jupiter Research. "You don't often find a video game that is going to appeal to 6-year-olds and 60-year-olds."

In courting the senior market, video game companies are luring the nation's largest demographic and tapping a growing research field, studying how cognitive activities and games stave off memory disorders.

And it's not just Nintendo.

Over the last few years, several companies, including Vigorous Mind and Lumos Labs, have developed computer games aimed at keeping the mind sharp. This fall, Sony will launch Buzz! The Mega Quiz -- which has attracted gamers of all ages in Europe -- in the United States.

Read the entire article on the Star Ledger

Companies helping employees care for their elderly parents

2007-07-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

Every week, Intel Corp. dispatches small armies of 20-something social scientists and engineers to households of old people living at the four corners of the earth -- to Rochester, N.Y. (with any luck, in the middle of a snowstorm), to an impoverished Ugandan village (where living to a ripe old age means making it to 40), to southern Italy, where there's barely a concept of "nursing home."

The microchip giant crunched the data -- 860 million people worldwide who are diagnosed with one or more chronic diseases, a number that's expected to double by 2025 and double again by 2050 -- and read the tea leaves.

They see a future of profit gain for innovators with products and services to deal with this senior tsunami and years of profit drain at businesses where growing numbers of employees become caregivers.

"Yes, it's a business opportunity for Intel but it's also a business imperative," Eric Dishman, general manager and global director of Intel's Health Research & Innovation Group concedes. "We have 90,000 employees and we know that a third of them do elder care. For many, it's a huge challenge -- like having a day job and a night job."

According to an AARP study, the economic value of family caregiving is worth $350 billion a year -- with productivity losses costing American businesses $33 billion.

A 1999 MetLife study found that 33 percent of working women decreased work hours, 29 percent passed up a job promotion, and 22 percent took a leave of absence -- all in order to fulfill caregiving responsibilities.

As 78 million Baby Boomers reach retirement age in less than three years, the impact is set to skyrocket. By 2030, 60 percent of Boomers will be managing more than one chronic condition; by 2040, seniors will outnumber caregivers 3-to-1.

Dishman's Digital Health Group was formed by Intel two years ago and charged with focusing on diseases and elder care. It began scheduling regular forums for its employees to help them anticipate the impact of the demographic disruption on their own lives. It hosted a Washington, D.C., business summit July 17 on "Chronic Care at the Crossroads," focused on greater engagement between policy makers, health professionals, payers and caregivers.

Read the entire article on mlive.com

Multimedia instruction should be learner-centered

2007-07-12T07:03:00.000-07:00

Richard E. Mayer, professor of psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, launched the Summer Faculty Institute, with an overview of how learner-centered instruction and multimedia technology can produce high-quality instruction.

Historically, two approaches have been used to combine multimedia technology with instruction. The first, a technology-centered approach, uses the capabilities of cutting-edge technology to create multimedia instruction. Unfortunately this approach doesn't take into account research that has established the way people learn and hasn't influenced the learning process, Mayer noted.

The second approach is a learner-centered approach. “A learner-centered approach is designed to influence the learning process; you must adapt the technology to the way the human mind works,” Mayer said.

“People learn better when multimedia messages are designed in ways that are consistent with research-based principles that have revealed how the human mind works,” Mayer said.

Nearly every decade has produced a new technology that promised to be of educational value: movies in the 1920s; instructional radio in the 1930s; and educational television in the 1950s. Initially these technologies provided great promise as educational tools. However, much of the instruction created with these technologies was technology-centered and did not fulfill their educational promise. “Meaningful learning is our goal; the behavioral activity alone does not foster meaningful learning,” Mayer said.

“Research has shown that the best way to help students learn is through integrating three cognitive processes: selecting, organizing and integrating,” Mayer said.

Research also has revealed the challenges that must be overcome to create meaningful multimedia learning. “The goal of the technology is to act as a productive communicator and provide cognitive guidance,” Mayer said, “not to get in the way of it.”

Source: UDaily

Electronic Medical Records on the iPhone

2007-07-09T06:37:00.000-07:00

From Life Record

Docs Unbound on iPhoneNow physicians and nurses can use the iPhone to quickly consult a wealth of continually updated information on diseases, drugs,

2007-07-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Now physicians and nurses can use the iPhone to quickly consult a wealth of continually updated information on diseases, drugs, and tests and to keep up with medical journals. For a limited time, a live demo of Unbound's iPhone interface is available at www.unboundmedicine.com/iphone.

Unbound Medicine offers a wide choice of medical products for the iPhone, placing emphasis on well known, regularly updated references. Among the popular titles available are Harrison's Manual of Medicine and Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests from McGraw-Hill, 5-Minute Clinical Consult from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Red Book® from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Davis's Drug Guide and Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary from F.A. Davis. Unbound MEDLINE rounds out the offering, allowing clinicians to track favorite medical journals and quickly search more than 17 million journal articles.

Unbound Medicine's customized iPhone interface takes full advantage of the built-in Safari™ web browser to give health professionals quick answers over cellular and WiFi networks. Users navigate intuitively by tapping on index terms or by entering searches into clinician-friendly forms. Cross-links and lists of related content instantly take a clinician from a disease management discussion to a drug monograph for the correct dose, possible interactions, and adverse effects of a recommended medication.

Source: Medgadget

We're part of the video revolution, and so are you

2007-06-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

If people were to ask me why a newspaper our size spends so much time on video, I'd tell them about Cody Rapol and Anderson Cooper.

You may be familiar with Cooper, one of CNN's star anchors. And you may remember Rapol, a young Roseville man who loves to shoot his own videos.

Both are featured on YouTube, a Web site that allows anyone to upload and display their digital videos to the world. When I have time, I search YouTube for videos related to the Zanesville area.

On Friday, I found a video Rapol produced shortly after Ohio's smoking ban went into effect in December. You can watch it by visiting my blog. Some of the language is raw, but I think it's worth watching.

Having the ability to upload your own mini-documentary is pretty cool. What's even cooler about YouTube is its willingness to let people post video replies.

One man responded to Rapol's video by describing how his father died of cancer. His story is wrenching and especially powerful. A North Carolina woman who used to live in Dresden also posted a response. You can see their videos on the blog, too.

Excerpt from Zanesville Times Recorder

Seniors flip for downloadable audio books

2007-06-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

While high-tech devices such as MP3 players are customarily linked to young people, Midstate libraries are finding they also attract a different audience: senior citizens.

That's because the libraries have begun offering popular "audio books" that can be downloaded via the Internet and played on the devices.

"I don't really know how to use an MP3 player, but I know enough to know how to do this," said Jim Burgin, 67, of Brentwood. "My grandson, my grandchildren — they have that all down, but I don't."

The Brentwood library has created a program, with federal funding, to teach older adults how to download the audio files and operate an MP3 player.

Libraries across the country are seeing the trend and encouraging it.

Read the entire article on the Tennessan.com

Neural Input Device Hints at Gaming Revolution

2007-06-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Neat brain-computer-interfaces. Although their neural input actuator is new, their claims of revolutionizing gaming, computers etc, is not.

The OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator looks like nothing more than a head band with a wire coming out of it, but this is far from something that you'd see Maria Sharapova sporting around the tennis court. It does look sporty though and the booth babe that OCZ had modeling it seemed happy to donate her neural activity.

A closer look at the Neural Impulse Actuator (and the model) reveals the bulge of the three neural sensors that are resting on the forehead of the user. Unlike an electrocardiography (ECG) machine commonly used in the medical industry the OCZ neural impulse actuator doesn't use electrode cream, which is a good thing because the last thing gamers would want to do is lube up before playing their favorite game.

With the neural impulse actuator removed the neural sensor pads can be clearly seen. Neural activity generates electrical potentials that are picked up by the three electrodes that are on the forehead of the user. The actuator then separates the electrical activities into three classes of neural and electromyographic signals. That is electro oculographic, electro encephalographic and electromyographic signals for those who are wondering! These signals are said to reflect the activities of the extraocular muscles, the brain, and the facial muscles.

These signals are then decoded and combined with each other to create unique commands based on the specific permutation of brain, eye and facial muscle activity. What's really weird about the technology is that it really does work! OCZ informed LR that the technology behind the neural impulse actuator is ready to go and they will be bringing the actuator to market. Unlike other products this device hooks into existing games now and allows you to play games like Unreal Tournament already. There is a learning curve to using one of these, but it's pretty easy and should take ~2 minutes to get the device working.

The biggest market for this device will be gamers as they will be able to use the neural impulse actuator in combination with the a mouse to control the shooting, jumping, running, etc. in FPS games. OCZ hopes to bring the actuator to market by year's end and hope to bring it to market at around $300 USD.

Then again, if we can't write for Medgadget with just our minds, it might be worth $300 bucks...

Original post from Medgadget

Technological advances could stem future demand for nursing homes

2007-05-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

At least that is his hope, given that improved mobility, independence and ability to remain safely at home improve long-term happiness and even life span for the aged.

All of which suggests that aging baby boomers someday will live like the Jetsons, with technology keeping track of their health and providing ready assistance in everyday life, including helping them to drive and shop.

Dr. Resnick, chief of University of Pittsburgh's Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology and director of Pitt's Institute on Aging, outlined technological ideas, many in the works in his own departments, to allow older people to stay home longer without risking their health and safety.

Read about advanaced heart monitoring, pill reminders, automated doctor to mobile phone perscriptions, vital statistics monitoring and more on the post-gazette

Japan to set up test zone for next-generation wireless technology for seniors

2007-05-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

TOKYO: Japan will set up an experimental high-tech wireless zone on one of its islands next year, where sensors will allow doctors to remotely monitor the health of the elderly and alert motorists to nearby pedestrians, a news report said Saturday.

Produce such as vegetables would carry IC tags that could send information such as where they were grown to shoppers' mobile phones, according to Kyodo News agency.
Sensors would monitor the movement of pedestrians and notify nearby drivers, and check the heart rate of elderly people living alone for round-the-clock monitoring by local hospitals, according to the report.

IC tags are tiny computer chips with antennas which can be used to track products.
To test the technology, the government intends to cooperate with telecom carriers, electronics manufacturers, automakers and other companies, the report said. Technology deemed successful will then be offered nationwide.

The wireless zone will likely be set up on the northern island of Hokkaido or southern island chain of Okinawa, where there is less radio wave interference, according to Kyodo. Calls to the ministry for confirmation went unanswered Saturday.

Japan is already a global leader in wireless technology.A 1 billion yen (US$8.7 million; €6.6 million) project in a central Tokyo shopping area uses 1,200 tiny computer chips embedded in lampposts, subway-station ceilings and roads to beam maps and store guides to passers-by

Source: International Herald Tribune

A Robot Improves Brain Function in Patients with Cognition Disorder

2007-05-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Kimura Clinic, and Brain Functions Laboratory participated in joint research involving Paro, a therapeutic seal robot, and patients with Alzheimer's disease and other cognition disorders to discover the effect of the robot on improving brain function.

Elderly subjects with cognition disorders were asked to interact with Paro. The subjects' brain waves were measured before and after the interaction for analysis. Out of the 14 people who participated in the study, 7 (50%) experienced an improvement in brain function. Studies in the past have shown that robot therapy involving Paro in domestic and international facilities for the elderly produces expressions and behavior in the patients that is similar to those in healthy people. Interaction with Paro improves brain function in elderly patients with cognition disorders and helps prevent the development of such disorders in healthy people. Furthermore, subjects who expressed a positive attitude towards Paro were found to show a greater response to the therapy.

In Japan, the cost of providing long term care for patients with cognition disorders has risen to 4 million yen per person. This represents an enormous burden for the municipalities that provide long term care insurance. Because of this, it has become increasingly important to find ways to prevent cognition disorders that will require long term care.

People who interact with Paro are expected to improve the quality of their lives and prevent the onset of cognition disorders. In this way, Paro can help decrease the need for long term care.
These results are going to be presented at the Stockholm-Tokyo video conference on Service Robots and the Aging Population on September 22, 2005.

Read the entire article on AIST

America: The Growing Digital Divide

2007-05-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

A new study (pdf) published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that there is a growing digital divide across America.

John B. Horrigan’s analysis of America’s use of Web 2.0 and information and communications technology in the broader sense shows that whilst a reasonable number of Americans are embracing new technology and Web 2.0, a disturbing number are either not getting the message, or are choosing not to participate.

31% of Americans are considered to be “Elite Tech Users”, where as 49% have few tech assets, either engaging with the online world only on occasion, or not at all.

8% of people are considered to be “omnivores” which the study describes as being Web 2.0 devotes, highly engaged with video online and digital content; “creative participants in cyberspace”.

Is the switch off factor strictly a question of Age? The study found that the Top 8% are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age of the Top 8% is 28 with more than half of them under the age of 30. The bottom 15% was not surprisingly older, with a median age of 64 – and as a group reported the lowest levels of household income. And yet this group isn’t entirely switched off: 82% watch TV everyday and 76% have cable or satellite service, and collectively had the highest levels of watching TV or listening to radio of any group in the study; it’s just that there not using Web 2.0.

It would be easy to conclude that as an industry our message is not getting across as well it should be. Yet from such figures I’m actually drawn to the fact that such a high reported figure for those not engaging is an opportunity waiting to happen. There can be no market saturation until such time the 31% blows out to something closer to 100%.

As famously demonstrated with the Nintendo Wii, targeting a non-hardcore market can and does have its rewards.

Source: TechCrunch

TV on the Internet

2007-04-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

Find the top 10 blogs about TV on the Internet here http://www.dailyiptv.com/news/top-10-iptv-bloggers-042307/.

Wicks proposes tagging elderly

2007-04-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Science minister Malcolm Wicks has suggested electronic tags could be used to track elderly people with dementia.

He told the Commons science and technology committee: "Some might benefit from being monitored so that families know they are safe and secure."
While acknowledging the government would need to be sensitive to "avoid a 'Big brother' approach", he suggested the satellite technology - also used to track criminals - could have further applications.

"Satellites currently monitor the planet in a variety of different ways. I'm raising this as an issue for discussion," he told MPs on Wednesday.
"Are there other uses of technology that could benefit society?

"We've got an ageing population with many people frail and many suffering from dementia, including Alzheimer's.

"How can we get the balance right so that these people have the freedom to live their lives, to go out in the community and go shopping?"

Kate Jopling from Help the Aged gave the minister's suggestion a cautious welcome.

"Clearly at first glance these proposals may smack of the 'Big brother' state, but we shouldn't dismiss the potential of new technologies to afford dignity and opportunity to vulnerable older people," she said.

"Help the Aged wants to see more older people with dementia enabled to live as independently as possible in the community, and this might be a way of achieving this whilst minimising some of the risks.

"The key issue would of course be the involvement and consent of the individual, and their family and carers, to ensure that the technology means better care - not just care that's cheaper or more convenient."

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, also sounded a sceptical note. She said: "A debate about better care for the elderly is a good thing but technical gimmicks often provide cheap and quick fixes rather than dignified and possibly expensive care."

New Telecare Technology Launched as Social Inclusion Rises

2007-04-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

Real-time broadband teleconferencing system set to revolutionise healthcare landscape

mediagrids, specialists in broadband videoconferencing for the care industry, has today announced the launch of its next generation telecare solution; broadcare (www.broadcare.co.uk). The ground-breaking system will advance the telecare industry beyond panic buttons and voice-only call centres to enable hospitals and care centres to provide intelligent and discreet monitoring of individuals in their own environments.

Not only does this new approach allow patients to return home, but it also enables hospitals to free up valuable bed spaces. broadcare will complement today’s telephone only solutions by providing a permission-based, interactive audio-visual experience, between care centres and client’s homes using standard broadband internet connections. The system is positioned to provide enormous savings in healthcare spending, whilst at the same time improving levels of remote care for a number of groups including children, the elderly, psychiatric patients and those suffering with diabetes or dementia.

“The modern social and economic climate is driving dramatic changes in telecare,” said Chris Williams, CEO of mediagrids. “A number of issues such as the ageing population, spiralling costs in the NHS, availability of beds & care facilities and the significantly increasing importance of independent living for patients coping with a long term illness has advanced the telecare industry into a new era. Two thirds of all beds in the NHS are occupied by the elderly, yet 90% of these individuals would prefer to be at home. The good news is that half these people could return home much sooner if the appropriate levels of telecare support were in place.

”The home health hubs, when used with a camera and biometric devices; such as blood pressure and heart monitors; convert a standard television set or computer into a high quality videoconferencing and biometric workstation. Using this next generation of telecare systems, call centres can also become more proactive by scheduling regular calls into clients working with the advantage of live, visual contact which makes carers better placed to call for emergency assistance immediately if required. Statistics show that 40% of all accidents involving the elderly are falls which, in some cases, can go undetected for days.

Williams claims that broadcare will change the landscape of the healthcare industry, and the way in which care centres and hospitals liaise with patients will soon be re-written. The broadcare system is expected to have a substantial impact on how:

clients with dementia are effectively monitored in their own homes
the relatives of elder clients learn about falls and other such accidents that often lead to the elderly being taken into care. Intelligent cameras can also assist in the identification of falls.
disabled clients are monitored by carers - fundamentally at the touch of a button
recuperating clients can be allowed to return home, yet continue to be monitored remotely to ensure they are managing in their own environment
social inclusion is inherent in the design of broadcare. Broadband is always on and charged at a fixed rate so clients can benefit from videoconferencing carers, friends and family 24 hours a day* clients can expect to stay at home longer before going into care
care for the carers can be improved – the workload can be shared across care groups
children in hospital interact with their parents and siblings via a permanent link for support

Source: Response Source

Ever wonder what devices are approved by the FDA?

2007-04-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

We'll now you can check them out here http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfPMA/pma_pas.cfm

2007-04-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

Hungarian medical student and blogger Bertalan Meskó usually works to inform the masses about how Web 2.0 can help/change/improve the practice of medicine. Recently he gave his readers a glimpse into the future of the internet's influence on science and medicine with Wiki-Proteins, the first Web 3.0 project. Web 3.0 is marketed as the development of the "semantic web", which is claimed to be orders of magnitude more powerful and intuitive than today's technology.

An excerpt from the Wikipedia article summarizes what exactly the "semantic web" will be:
Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Finnish word for "car", to reserve a library book, or to search for the cheapest DVD and buy it. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedium involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web.

The mission of Wiki-Protein is to connect the scientific world's protein resources like Medline, IntAct, the National Library of Congress, UniPort, and the GO Consortium to expedite the exploration and exchange of knowledge. Their web site is still in the developmental stages, but any scientists whose research is even remotely involved with proteins should absolutely check out the site and watch the demo.

From Medgadget

When regular TV broadcasts go dark

2007-04-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

If you were caught off guard when the federal government rescheduled the changeover to the daylight saving time, be prepared for another shock just over the horizon.

On February 17, 2009, the analog over-the-air TV broadcasting we've known for more than 50 years is scheduled to end and be replaced by digital broadcasting. Once television stations drop their analog broadcasting and go digital, old-style analog TV sets will effectively go dark.

While moving the nation to a superior technology, this analog-to-digital transition could cause massive problems for Americans still using analog sets, especially those who get television programs off the free airwaves.

The change to digital broadcasting was mandated by Congress as a way of updating the nation's television broadcasting network in one fell swoop. It's already stimulating innovation in both broadcasting and consumer products, and helping move computing, gaming and communications (along with television) closer to digital convergence.

Read the entire perspective on CNet

Grandpa’s a Gamer: Some 100-Year-Olds Are Embracing Modern Technology

2007-04-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

Americans who are 100 years old or older are making surprising use of up-to-date technology, according to a recent survey of 100 centenarians. They’re listening to iPods, watching videos, and even playing video games, just like their great-grandchildren.

According to the survey, one in seven of those polled have played video games, while nearly a third of those asked have watched reality shows and a quarter have watched MTV or other music video channels.

The respondents’ results aren’t entirely up to date, however; the survey’s choice for favorite talk show host, Johnny Carson, retired in 1992 and died in 2005.

The survey, called “Evercare 100@100,” was issued for the second straight year by Evercare, a subsidiary of United Health Group which primarily serves the “elderly, disabled, and chronically ill.” The survey is meant as a “snapshot” of the lives of America’s nearly 80,000 centenarians, and is not a truly scientific poll.

Source: eGear

What students are up to these days

2007-04-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

E-Mackqulent, LLC. (EMQ) is the brainchild of three Hampton University students who have a vision and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. EMQ is co-owned and operated by Antonio Hawthorne, senior media management major from Piscataway, N.J.; Erin Z. Young, senior public relations major and marketing minor from Wilmington, Del.; and SGA president Darrian Mack, junior broadcast journalism major and marketing minor from Randallstown, Md.

What is EMQ? It is a new media multimedia organization which produces EMQTV, a broadband television network highlighting the black college experience.

“We are a cable channel that exists on the Internet,” said Young.

The network site, http://www.emqtv.com/, launched in late January. EMQTV began as an idea for an on-campus television station which Hawthorne and Mack hoped would replace the “power point station” available to HU on-campus residents. Hawthorne and Mack met in a chat room during the 2004-2005 school year and began discussing their ideas to create and broadcast television programs for the student body. Young joined the group in December 2004. The students further developed the idea of their immaculate” organization and chose that name for their company with a unique spelling combining all of their names.

After several lengthy meetings and brainstorming ideas for the station, EMQ filmed their first program in Wilder Hall. This filming led to a meeting with Hampton University administrators who encouraged the students to “globalize” their project and think about how to broadcast their program to other universities.

This led to the idea of creating a broadband network.

The idea was “definitely divine intervention,” said Young. Young said the group realized that “all media companies are developing broadband media arms” and that EMQTV is the “perfect thing” to reach their target audience.

The students developed a business plan and decided to incorporate in Delaware as a Limited Liability Company (LLC). Then in Summer 2006 the group began to create their site.

“We were able to afford certain technologies thanks to generous gifts from angel investors,” said Hawthorne.

We also gained “access to a lot of marketing data especially in the black collegiate market,” said Young.

Hawthorne and Mack spent months developing the site design and Young worked with Hawthorne to create the site content. EMQTV.com now contains five components: EMQ News, Submit Your Video viral video, The College Yard social network, music, and EMQ on Campus broadband television programs. The EMQ site is supported by advertising features market specific advertising and is geared toward black college students and alumni ages 18-35. The owners are excited that their market is growing because more black students are attending college than ever before.

Young said that site is not strictly for HBCU students but for all black college students because “the black college experience is shared no matter where you are.”
The group has focused on creating a socially conscious site by displaying positive images and encouraging alumni giving.

“We were not satisfied with the portrayal of black college students in other media,” said Young.
The students have spent long nights and given up their social life at times to create an impressive product.

“These guys have become a large part of my family,” said Young.
The family oriented company is not stopping with EMQTV. They have future goals of providing business consultation, establishing a “brick and mortar” cable site, and to spreading their brand among all media.

Article courtesy of Hampton University's Office of Unversity Relations. Article can be found in the Hampton University publication, Student Connection. *Note EMQNews' is a parent company of E-Mackqulent, LLC, mentioned in this article.

Keeping up with the times key to successful aging

2007-04-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

Whether it's listening to an iPod, playing video games or keeping up with the news, staying in tune with the times may help people live to 100.

That's some of the advice from a poll of elderly people who were questioned about the secrets of longevity.

Spirituality, a healthy diet, no smoking and being happy were also high of the list of what is important for a long life.

"They very much paid attention to both technology and current events," Dr John Mach, the head of Evercare which conducted the poll, said about the elderly respondents.

Evercare, which provides care coordination programs for the elderly and disabled, surveyed 100 people who were 99 years and older.

"It is all about successful aging and trying to understand what are the key drivers for successful aging," he added in an interview.

Centenarians do not embrace technology as much as middle aged people or younger groups, but Mach said he was surprised by the extent to which they had been exposed to it.
More than 30 percent of the elderly questioned in the poll said they had watched reality television shows, 24 percent had bought CDs and 15 percent had played video games.

Six percent had used the internet and four percent had listened to music on an iPod.

"Certainly we know that social interactions make a difference over a lifetime, so maintaining those social interactions ... in emails, the Internet and being able to converse about current events, that does contribute to the overall social wellbeing of people which we know contributes to successful aging," Mach added.

Better healthcare, vaccinations, improvements in water supplies and a drop in child mortality have contributed to the soaring ranks of centenarians.

They are thought to be the fastest growing segment of the population in the United States and other industrial countries.

There are nearly 80,000 centenarians living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number is expected to soar to 580,000 by 2040.

Spirituality was also a consistent theme in the survey, according to Mach. When the elderly respondents were asked who they admired or trusted most, 34 percent named their priest, rabbi or preacher.

The majority of those questioned said they either lived at home alone or with a spouse. Thirty-four percent said they would choose a better memory over having fewer aches and pains or losing weight.

Most of them had never smoked. Of those who did, 21 percent managed to kick the habit. Nearly 40 percent said they think they eat a better diet today than they did 50 years ago.
Among the greatest medical achievements during their lifetime, the centenarians ranked heart bypass surgery, pacemakers and cancer treatments on the top of the list.

Source: Reuters

New Interactive Television To Assist Patients And Elderly

2007-03-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

In this day and age, who wants their elderly parents [actually] living with them, when they could just turn on the TV and check on them in between commercials? Plus, if there's a problem you can just call your doctor and have him watch them on TV as well.

Telecommunications engineer at the Public University of Navarre, Alejandro Fanjul Fernández, has designed a pioneering system of telemedicine for interactive digital television. This system enables the monitoring and treatment of and support for both patients and elderly people, from the comfort and convenience of their homes, by means of the television. This is the first tele-assistance system in Spain for interactive digital television and a number of companies and government bodies have expressed interest in marketing the application...

This designed tele-assistance system, known as ATS-Interactiva, focuses its services on the monitoring and treatment of and support for patients by means of television. To this end, every so often, a series of check-ups and medication reminders are carried out, which at the same time enable a channel of communication to be opened up between the health care professional and the patient...

Through a complex system of data treatment and interactivity with the patient, the ATS-Interactiva system enables doctors to have a complete system of monitoring of patients at hand at all times, enabling them to assess patients' progress through the observation of their vital signs: weight, pulse, blood pressure, glucose level and so on.

This application may be of great utility for undertaking the monitoring of patients who are convalescing in a post-operative recovery stage but who can carry out their basic functions in an independent manner. It is also of great interest to those elderly persons who require a minimum of control and monitoring of their state of health on a daily basis. The progress of these persons may be followed without them having to be transferred to a health clinic or hospital - the monitoring being undertaken simply from their sitting-room sofa using the TV remote control.
Moreover, for the over 60s who watch more than 4 1/2 hours of TV daily, the system has an application known as an "interactive dosifier" that provides a personalised reminder for the administration of medicines. In this way, when the patient is due to take medication, the system emits a sound signal and a nurse appears on the TV screen to remind the patient of what has to be taken and a complete description or written recommendation from the doctor on how it should be taken.

The system also enables communication between the patient and the doctor through interactive messages or by electronic mail, again using the TV set. Today the possibility of communicating with the doctor has become vital in the treatment of any kind of ailment. This creates genuine patient-health care professional trust when dealing with a possible health problem.

The application of tele-assistance, moreover, does not interfere with television viewing, as the screen can be minimised or left in the background of the TV screen in such a way that, while the system is operating, TV programmes continue to be seen, the system information appearing in the foreground only when the patient has to be reminded or she or he requests information.
The ATS-Interactiva identifies the patient by means of an intelligent card, in such a way that he or she may locate to a different town and the monitoring can continue, as long as the intelligent card is carried on their person and connected to a receptor where the ATS-Interactiva application is available. In principle the emission of the system over a specific TV channel is being considered
More at ScienceDaily. . .

Source: Medgadget

Forget the nursing home, talk to the television

2007-03-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

My Dad was laughing the other week at one of those naff car stickers that read: Be nice to your children, they choose your nursing home.

As he chortled I pointed out that he'd really better heed this message with as much gravitas as his advancing years could muster.

But if a UK technology start-up gets its way, the nursing home could become an increasingly rare phenomenon.

Care homes could be replaced with a broadband-based platform that its makers claim will enable the elderly and the sick to stay in their homes much longer than is currently possible.
Mediagrids has developed a platform that uses broadband, 3G and eventually WiMax, to provide telecare services.

It says its technology goes far beyond the realms of panic buttons and voice-only call centres and will include intelligent monitoring of people in their home to provide preventative care.
People needing care or medical attention will be able to have their homes connected to the system that will monitor their health and check they are not in trouble using digital cameras and interactive communication technology.

So in theory, an elderly person could fall over and the care workers manning the system would know immediately because they could see into the home and talk to the person to assess how much help they need.

It will also apparently be able to remind people to take medication, provide virtual links to medical staff, and allow users and their friends and family to have interactive video chats through their television sets. While the company has yet to sign-up any UK customers, it has appointed a reseller that is piloting the technology with two unnamed NHS trusts.

The idea sounds great in practice but is dependent on healthcare organisations, and individuals, having the requisite broadband connections, and perhaps more importantly being willing to trust such advanced methods of care. As the nation increasingly rebels against 'Big Brother' culture, there are bound to be questions about the invasive nature of the technology. And then there is the challenge of getting elderly people who have never used a computer to accept that they are being looked after by a camera on the bookshelf.

It could take some convincing.

Source: Fromthenewdesk

Big Problem: Alzeimers Increases

2007-03-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Every 70 seconds someone in America develops Alzheimers.

That statistic is according to the Alzheimers Association. In a recent study the association said more than 5 million Americans are living with the disease. That's a 10 percent increase since the last estimate five years ago.

Treatment is currently available for Alzheimers patients, but there is no cure for the disease. That means if these numbers keep growing by 2050 that toll could reach 16 million.

But as WBKO's Fida Georges reports there is more to these statistics, and the findings of this study have implications for long term health care.

Director of Western's Center for Gerontology, Dr. Dana Bradley, said the findings of this study seem alarming, but reflect the aging of our general population.

"As the baby boomers enter into old age (they are turning 60 now) they are becoming older. The population is aging and also we have increases in longevity," Bradley said

Read the entire article on WBKO

Smart apartment keeps an eye on the elderly

2007-03-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering has showed off new technologies at CeBIT designed to help elderly people retain their independence and mobility.
The average age in first world societies is continually increasing, and most elderly people prefer to retain their independence as long as possible. But there is an increasing problem with friends and relatives keeping an eye on their loved ones.

Motion detectors, floor coverings with RFID chips and sensors embedded into everyday items can ensure that anyone in trouble receives help in an emergency.
For instance, if a person's walking stick falls onto the floor, the owner is asked if everything is all right through a speaker. If there is no response the emergency services are contacted automatically.

Another example is a cup that can detect drinking motion to monitor liquid intake and warn someone if they should be drinking more fluids.
Eric Ras, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute, demonstrated some of the new developments incorporated into a mini version of an intelligent apartment to vnunet.com.
The concept focuses around establishing a person's habits and routines and flagging a potential problem if there are deviations from these procedures, even if the person is not necessarily aware of them.

The system can respond to these breaks from routine in a variety of ways, either by providing a warning to the person or contacting loved ones or emergency services, depending on the perceived severity of the situation.

From computing

Going Digital Will Leave Poor, Elderly Without TV Signal

2007-03-23T18:35:00.000-07:00

The U.S. government is forcing its citizens to go digital. That’s right, forcing. On Feb. 17, 2009, all existing televisions receiving channels through analog signals will shut down because all television stations will switch to digital signals. This means that the estimated 21 million homes now getting signals over the air will have to buy an analog to digital converter box or buy a new digital television.

There are 13 million households with analog TVs. That’s about 8O million sets, with most of them belonging to the elderly and low-income households. But that’s not to say that students won’t be affected. Many students, like myself, either have some hand-me-down fossil, can’t afford cable, or simply don’t want it. But even those who don’t want it won’t be able to get basic TV channels on an analog TV.

But why go digital? On its Web site, the Federal Communications Commission claims that digital television “broadcast technology is more flexible and efficient than … analog.” As an example, the FCC cites the possibilities presented by what it calls “multicasting,” a method that will allow digital television to provide both high-definition and standard-definition signals simultaneously. Finally, the conversion to digital will supposedly free up parts of the broadcast system to be used for public services like police and fire departments and emergency rescue services.
It seems to me, however, that all these reasons vaguely conceal what is really happening. The digital conversion is, ultimately, a ploy by the government to curry favor with big business. In this case, it’s the television industry. This isn’t really surprising. Governments have always had a need to please interest groups, and big business wields a big stick and doesn’t speak particularly softly.

The prospect of selling millions of new digital televisions has to put a smile on the industry’s collective face. Not to mention the reported 61 percent of those receiving over-the-air signal who say they have no idea this is happening. Many of these consumers may be people over the age of 65, who are the nation’s second largest TV viewing community. Others may be families with young children. At 40 hours per week, children are the watch TV more than any other age group.

Because of this, Feb. 17 will be a field day for the repair industry, which will only be able to tell people to get a converter box or buy a new set. And you know they will still charge for service.
Those standing to make all this money will get exactly that. But it seems as though they may be the only ones to benefit. First of all, what does a low-income family care about higher picture quality when they have to buy a $40 to $50 digital converter box for every television in their house? These converters will allow people to get reception, but will not provide the higher picture quality of digital television. So, basically, people will have to bend over backwards just to keep their old TV. Either that or buy a new one.

The government is trying to help subsidize people by giving them coupons for up to two converters. They will be available from Jan. 1, 2008 through March 31, 2009 and will probably work through rebates. But, honestly, who do you know that only has two televisions? People shouldn’t have to do this at all.

So, while big business can stay happy with itself, everybody else has to bleed his or her own resources to make this happen. And while certain public resources may be helpful, it has yet to be seen if the government will follow though on this promise. America may want to stay on top of the technological ladder, but it shouldn’t be forced upon consumers. The transition to digital media is already happening and people don’t need The Man to tell them when to take the plunge.

Maybe this is the chance of a lifetime. Maybe people should all just give up television. We’d all be better off without Flavor Flav anyway.

Source: The Golden Gate xPress

Medical site is on a mission to set records

2007-03-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

Practice Fusion has reached an agreement with Google to provide its web-based Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software for free. Google ads will be financing the product. (See SFGate)

Having just experienced how painful and expensive the transition to EMR can be, this development can be incredibly beneficial to smaller scale practices. These are PracticeFusion's features from their website:

* Free: We do not charge licensing fees for our application, nor do we charge for hosting.

* Integrated and Interoperable: Connecting physicians to other physicians, their patients, healthcare groups and RHIOs--delivering secure, shared patient information.

* On-Demand: Our Solution is web-based requiring no software to implement and manage. Provisioning is a fraction of the time of client-server solutions.

* One View: We provide unified, aggregated views into clinical data across the entire physician and patient community.

AgeSpan offers Virtual Visitation for family members in Nursing Homes, Assisted Living Centers, and Veterans Administration Hospitals

2007-03-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

AgeSpan, a senior Internet enabling solution for seniors in the United States, unveiled their SAM (Senior Assisted Monitoring) Cam solution for combating nursing home abuse and monitoring health conditions in VA Hospitals. Working on this solution for the past 6 years, AgeSpan had to overcome the many cons associated with the use of cameras in assisted living centers and nursing homes. Complicated daily maintenance tasks, high hardware costs, and infringement of privacy are examples of the obstacles that groups against video surveillance in nursing homes repeated over and over again as things that needed to be addressed and fixed. Fortunately for them, as the technology progressed these obstacles were eliminated.

While working on the camera solution, AgeSpan also discovered that the camera is a perfect solution for satisfying virtual visitation needs by the family members and nurses that are contracted to visit the elderly in their homes while overseeing such things as their eating and medicinal habits. This solution allows seniors to continue an independent life in their current home, reduce their future living expenses, and make it possible for seniors to live near their families, but not with them.

With this advanced camera technology, complimented by AgeSpan's in-house ability to engineer, furnish, and install the customer's requested configuration for a turnkey solution, these negatives have turned into positives. Craig German, an AgeSpan representative, recently said: "The latest camera technology allows the end-user to see in low to no-light conditions allowing for night time viewing, much like we've seen in video sent to us by CNN of the Gulf War. In addition, this same camera can take a picture at a prescribed time or an event, via it built-in motion detection features, and then e-mail the picture to a responsible party so that they can view it on the new cell phones, PCs, or laptops anywhere in the world! With the camera's fast video frame rates you won't get those robotic-like video pictures anymore that web cameras provide."

Source: eMediaWire

Salamander Robotics...just something interesting

2007-03-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

A group of European researchers developed a computerized robotic model of a salamander. According to the press release by the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne such a model will be quite helpful for neurobiologists to study human spinal cord processes.

The researchers used a numerical model of the salamander's spinal cord to explore three fundamental issues related to this vertebrate's movement: what were the changes in the spinal cord that made it possible to evolve from aquatic to terrestrial locomotion? How are the limb and axial movements coordinated? And how is a simple electrical signal from the brain stem translated by the spinal cord into a change in gait?
Once they thought they had answers to these questions, the team implemented the model - a system of coupled oscillators representing the neural networks in the spinal cord - on a primitive salamander-like robot. Simple electrical signals, like the signals sent from the upper brain to the spinal cord, were sent wirelessly from a laptop to the robot. These signals were enough to cause the robot to change its speed and direction and change from walking to swimming. The model therefore provides a potential explanation - relevant for all four-legged organisms - of how agile locomotion is controlled by distributed neural mechanisms located in the spinal cord.

The robot serves here as a useful tool for neurobiology, explains EPFL professor Auke Ijspeert. "We used the robot to show that our model actually reflects reality.

The robot was very useful to validate that our model could effectively modulate speed, direction and gait - aspects that need a mechanical "body" to be properly evaluated - and also to verify that the generated movements are close to those of a real salamander."

This research may ultimately point to a way to gain better understanding of the more sophisticated circuits in the human spinal cord. If the control signals received by the spinal cord could be identified, perhaps it would be possible to re-initiate these by electrical stimulations in patients with spinal cord injuries.
And it's a vivid demonstration that biology offers unique ideas for robotics design. "Nature found a nice way of making a sophisticated circuit in the spinal cord and then controlling the muscles from there," notes Ijspeert. "It's a fantastic solution for coordinating multiple degrees of freedom in a simple distributed way." Robots that could change their speed, direction, and gait based on simple remote signals, like living organisms, would be extremely useful in search and rescue operations, for example.

From Medgadget

Phone for seniors slows down voices

2007-03-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

NTT DoCoMo’s new mobile phone for the elderly actually looks rather appealing.

The Raku-Raku Phone Basic is the latest in a very successful line of functional, but usually dull, handsets aimed at making the senior population feel part of the mobile generation here. And at getting them to open their wallets once a month, of course.

The newcomer, which will go on sale in April for about ¥20,000, was designed by Kenya Hara, the art director of Muji and features plenty to keep granny (and some tech writers) happy.

Most unusual is the ‘Slow Voice’ feature, which – as you might guess – slows down the spoken words coming through the earpiece for easy listening. Then there’s ‘Clear Voice’ noise detection, which takes account of surrounding noise levels and adjusts the earpiece and ringtone volume to suit.

On top of that, the silver set gets an automated voice that reads out onscreen text from email or web pages and announces incoming caller identities and a pedometer that can work out daily calorie consumption.

Although there’s no camera, the Raku-Raku Phone basic weighs just 103g, has a 2.4in screen, a standby time of up to a staggering 560 hours and a certain elderly chic that guarantees success in this rapidly graying nation.

From Digital World Tokyo

Japan's Next-Gen technologies aid seniors

2007-03-05T22:38:00.000-08:00

It makes for a jabber-filled downtown stroll -- getting deluged by chatter over earphones from some 1,200 tiny computer chips embedded in lampposts, subway-station ceilings and road cement, beaming maps, tidbits of history and store guides.
The 1 billion yen (US$8.7 million; euro6.6 million) Japanese government-backed Tokyo Ubiquitous Technology Project spans several blocks of the Ginza district, and similar experimental efforts are under way in several other spots nationwide.

University of Tokyo professor Ken Sakamura says the effort gives a glimpse into the future, when chips on objects and places will become widespread so government offices and private businesses will use them to zip information to passers-by.

"This project is to build an infrastructure for the 21st Century," Sakamura said during a demonstration tour Monday.

Reporters strolled around the Ginza shopping district, dangling from necks special portable devices with a screen and earphones but no keyboard.

Every time we passed by a computer chip, say, at a store or at a showroom, an electronic voice began narrating an explanation.

Stand in front of Mitsukoshi Department Store, and a voice runs down how the statue of a lion in front of the building has long been its trademark.

Cross the street to Nissan Motor Co.'s showroom, and the handheld has automatically switched from receiving information from the chip at the store to a chip at the showroom, and began showing a video of a woman talking.

"Welcome to Nissan Ginza gallery," she says.

Pushing some buttons on the device makes an electronic map, a photo about a landmark's history, or guide to a nearby clinic pop up on the screen.

American cities have expressed interest in the technology, Sakamura said, while refusing to disclose the names of the U.S. cities yet.

Japan is serious about such project as a rapidly aging society likely to need help to guide the elderly, the blind and the handicapped through city streets, Sakamura said.

Japan also sees potential in the service -- now available in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean -- to help foreign tourists get around, he said.

Unlike Netsurfing on laptops or mobile phones, the information that comes is automatic and requires no button-pushing, Sakamura says.

The Ginza project uses chips that relay wireless information and RFID, or radio frequency identification, chips, whose information can be bounced back and read if the portable device, which emits radio waves, is brought within inches (centimeters) of the chip.

Today's widespread RFID chips can't be updated. But the chips in Sakamura's project relay information that's constantly updated in computer servers. Next year, he hopes to expand the Ginza project to 10,000 chips.
Sakamura acknowledged the chips could be used for "Big Brother" monitoring, but denied his research had such intentions, vowing: "We do not put tags on people

From ChinaPost

Gadgets for graying set

2007-03-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

Baby boomers demand - and get - big-button TV remotes, no-frills cell phones and computers that start with a touch

While conducting a computer seminar recently at Sun City Lincoln Hills, Terry Rooney heard murmurs of approval when he showed off a Windows Vista feature that allows users to magnify selected portions of a Web page.

"They were very impressed," said Rooney, president of the retirement community's computer club. "Being able to easily read the screen is a concern for a lot of people."

Indeed, as the aging American population increasingly peers through reading glasses, fumbles with keys and begins to ponder life with hearing aids, technology companies are gearing up new products or adapting existing ones to capture a potentially huge and profitable demographic -- baby boomers.

Read the entire article on SacBee.com

The gadgets include oversize TV remote controls, simplified cellular phones and computers that ask for a thumbprint instead of a password.

"Baby boomers have driven the economy and consumer demand for about every decade they have existed," said Andrew Carle, director of the Assisted Living/Senior Housing Administration program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "As long as they continue to control the money, they will continue to drive the products that are being developed."

65 the new 30something...

2007-03-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

Look who's turning 65. These are the icons the boomer generation grew up with. Now they're becoming senior citizens, and blowing away the tired stereotypes around aging. Welcome to the new face of seniority.

Phil Espoito

Aretha Franklin

Barbara Streisand

Harrison Ford

Read the enture article on the Hamilton Spectator

simple + computer + TV = Apple TV

2007-02-27T11:29:00.000-08:00

My mother who is handicapped and vision imparied is awaiting the arrival of Apple TV. As its released, I'll update you on her installation and usage as an example of senior tech which improves life.

From Apple

Brain Training DOES boost brain power

2007-02-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

Is the brain like the muscles in your body? Can it be trained with cognitive exercises to improve mental agility and sharpness as you get older?

Quite a bit of research has come out lately indicating that the answer to this question is a resounding ‘Yes’.

The most recent research I’ve come across is the ACTIVE study (Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly), published in the December issue of JAMA (reference below). The amazing findings indicate a mere 10 training sessions (each lasting 60-75 minutes) over a five week period was enough to significantly improve cognitive ability and brain power. Importantly, the brain boosting effect lasted more than five years.

The benefits were actually quite impressive. Dr. Sherry Willis, one of the chief authors of the study, notes: “The improvements seen after training roughly counteract the degree in decline in cognitive performance that we would expect to see over a 7-14 year period among older people without dementia”.

The study included 2,832 participants over the age of 65.

I’ve come across a few interesting brain training programs (mainly for those over 50) and will be posting reviews in the next month or two.

From Sharpen your mental edge

Mayo Clinic goes to mobile phones

2007-02-24T07:55:00.000-08:00

Mayo Clinic and Digital Cyclone (a subsidiary of Garmin) have collaborated to develop a software application that delivers an array of health information and tools directly to cellular phones. The Mayo Clinic InTouch wireless health program will be available next week offering wireless phone subscribers a rich health resource directly on their phone with immediate access to step-by-step first aid tips, a symptom checker that provides self-care guidelines or advises emergency care for more than 45 common symptoms in adults and children, health news videos, health alerts and drug watches.

"Mayo Clinic's mission has three elements: quality patient care, research to help cure diseases and education," says Roger Harms, M.D., a Mayo Clinic obstetrician and gynecologist and the medical editor-in-chief for MayoClinic.com. "Our education function is not limited to training the next generation of physicians and other medical providers, though. We also see providing health information to consumers as essential. Through this new project we're able to make it available to them wherever they are."

In addition, subscribers may enter their city or ZIP code to search for nearby emergency and urgent care facilities from a list of over 3,800 accredited providers. If the cell phone has global positioning system (GPS) capability, it automatically finds nearby accredited facilities without typing the city or ZIP code. The care center's information is displayed in list format and shows the facility's name, address and estimated distance.

Content for the Mayo Clinic InTouch program primarily comes from MayoClinic.com and Mayo Clinic's Medical Edge syndicated news products. Customers can subscribe to the Mayo Clinic InTouch program for US$2.99 per month. A list of wireless carriers and phones supported can be found here. http://www.digitalcyclone.com/mayo. http://www.mayoclinic.com/

From Gizmag

Take a Free Cognitive Brain Health Test

2007-02-23T11:10:00.000-08:00

Everyone can relate to improving their brain health, whether it is an elite team of executives looking to optimize their effectiveness, or an individual concerned about brain aging or a distinct problem. Recently, The Brain Resource Company launched a free, confidential, 40-minute cognitive brain test in partnership with the Alliance for Aging Research. The company is offering the test at no cost until May 14, 2007. I haven't taken it yet, but it might be an interesting way to obtain a baseline against which to monitor changes over time.

From Corante BrainWaves blog

Fitness for your brain...

2007-02-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

"I was surprised how much plasticity, how much flexibility older brains have, because the general belief up until a decade ago was that brains deteriorated as we age. That's not true," he says.

Not true at all. Plasticity is the actual strengthening of connections between neurons, stopping, yes, even reversing memory loss. Physical exercise helps, and so do mental exercises.

"The brain is actually revising itself. It is actually plastically changing itself as you develop new skills and abilities, as you learn new things," says Mike Merzenich, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Merzenich has, in many ways, turned neuroscience on its head by championing this idea of plasticity. He has started a company called Posit Science that has developed a computer program called Brain Fitness, which is commercially available for about $400. Program users exercise their brain by doing thousands of different mental tasks per hour. The goal is a younger, more active mind.

Seniors at Leisure Cares' Heritage Estates community in California say Posit Science's brain fitness programs have made a difference.

"It stimulates your brain and really makes you remember and want to remember," says Grace Curran, one of the residents.

To be clear, says Gupta, what Merzenich is selling hasn't been independently proven to work. But a recent study in the journal of the American Medical Association says the benefits of cognitive training like this can last five years.

Without question, there are already lots of good reasons to exercise. But now we know you may be training the most important "muscle" of all: your brain.

From CBS Evening News

Signs of the generation gap...

2007-02-21T19:12:00.000-08:00

Ithaca may be the upstate oasis for young workers in the region, but the nonprofit Foodnet Meals on Wheels still finds it difficult to attract and retain workers under the age of 30.

With many students seeking high salaries and debt relief after graduation, the nonprofit sector isn't usually the first place they look to get their feet wet in the economy. Last spring, the Meals on Wheels Association of America conducted a survey that found 38 percent of Meals on Wheels programs did not have any employees under the age of 30. On average, most programs had a total of only one employee under the age of 30.

This comes at a time when the country is beginning to face the retirement of the baby boomers, a development that promises to transform both the workforce and the nature of the work itself. These trends mean that senior nutrition programs such as Meals on Wheels are facing a rapidly growing population of people likely to need service. Nationwide, 4 out of 10 programs report having waiting lists for nutrition services, and the demand is increasing.

With that in mind, Ithaca's Foodnet Meals on Wheels held a "Tomorrows Leaders" workshop last week at its headquarters on Triphammer Road - trying to recruit students from Ithaca College to join theirs and other programs that deal with senior nutrition. A contingent of gerontology professionals and Meals on Wheels representatives joined a small handful of Ithaca College students in touring Foodnet's operations and discussing the various opportunities available to students of nutrition and gerontology.

"Sometimes senior hunger is overlooked, and people don't think about it as much, but it's out there, and it's only increasing," says Marley Sweeney, Outreach Manager for the Meals on Wheels Association of America. "So many students really don't know about senior hunger. When I graduated from college I had no idea that there was such a need for this, and that seniors were out there going hungry. It's just that there are so many causes [like aids, breast cancer, and disaster relief], and students seem to really focus on those things, and those are important, but so is senior hunger."

In addition to familiarizing the students with the ins and outs of running a program such as Foodnet, the staff gave testimonials to the merits of working to serve the special-needs community. Steffanie McKay, a junior health sciences major with a concentration in nutrition, says she was impressed by what the Meals on Wheels staff had to say, and that the workshop reaffirmed that she wanted to help the elderly population with managing their nutritional needs.

"Before coming to the workshop, I only had a vague idea of what [Foodnet Meals on Wheels] did," says McKay. "I now have a greater understanding of all that goes on and how beneficial and important they are to the community. It's a unique atmosphere [at Foodnet] that helps the community in many ways, much more than just providing food."

Read the entire article on the Ithaca Times

Independence leads list of baby boomers' old-age wishes

2007-02-20T21:15:00.000-08:00

Minnesota's baby boomers want exactly what the state's long-term care system lacks: technology and creative programs that will help them remain independent and at home in their frail and elderly years.

That is one of the main conclusions of a study and survey being released today by Ecumen, a Shoreview-based provider of nursing homes and community services for the elderly.

Executives with the organization hope the results will inspire lawmakers and caregivers to try new approaches and programs before the massive boomer generation reaches retirement age.

Nine of 10 boomers in the survey said they want to live in their own homes rather than in rental apartments or nursing facilities. Most of the 564 survey respondents, ages 42 to 60, said they would pay more for a long-term care system that provides better community services.

"Boomers are saying, 'Give us some more options,' " said Eric Schubert, Ecumen's communications director. " 'Help us live where we want to live, how we want to live.' "

Read the entire article on St. Paul Pioneer Press

New technology tested to help European retirees

2007-02-18T21:27:00.000-08:00

A new project, part funded by the EU, could allow more people who have retired abroad to stay in their new homes rather than having to go into residential care.

Tunstall, a company which specialises in telecare and telehealth solutions, has been chosen to head up the new Service Orientated Programmable Smart Environments for Older Europeans (SOPRANO) project.

The €12 million project hopes to find technological solutions to the problems which will be faced by people as they get older.

Running for the next three and a half years, and featuring 20 partners from six European countries, the project will seek to "develop affordable, smart IT-based assisted living services aimed at promoting independence for older people".

"Against a background of accelerating demographic ageing across Europe, the latest telecare and telehealth solutions will play a pivotal role in helping to relieve some of the growing pressure on healthcare providers," said Mike Hodges, research and development director at Tunstall.

"The low-level, round-the-clock care provided by telecare technology offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional care, while also ensuring users get the support they need in the familiarity of their home environment."

Telecare projects have previously been trailed successfully for patients suffering from dementia, but this is one of the largest European projects to test the viability of installing devices in the homes of older European citizens.

From Retire from the Sun

The Intelligent Apartment

2007-02-18T21:22:00.000-08:00

Intelligent assisted living systems are the focus of the presentation of Fraunhofer IESE at this year's CeBIT in Hanover. A miniature version of the institute's own Assisted Living Laboratory will give visitors interesting insights into state-of-the-art research in this highly practice-relevant area. The goal is to enable elderly persons or those requiring care to remain longer in their own homes, living a self-determined life with the support of ultra-modern information technology. Fraunhofer IESE can be found in building 9 at booth B36 (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft) and at the booth of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF, B40.

It happens when you least expect it: A sudden circulatory weakness makes an elderly person dizzy and results in a fall. But the intelligent apartment becomes active immediately: In a realistic simulation across two fair booths, visitors can experience how the senior citizen's walking aid recognizes the accident, how the home automation system attempts on its own to communicate with the patient, and how it finally alerts the "Emergency Medical Dispatch Office". Medical experts estimate that, in the regional environment of IESE, this technique could already be used every day to save accident victims from suffering the more serious consequences of an accident.

The Assisted Living Lab, which is being introduced at the booths of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and BMBF, is indeed a very special kind of laboratory environment. What appears to be hardly different from a normal living environment is equipped throughout with sophisticated sensors and electronic data processing. The objective of this effort: An apartment that proactively reacts in case of emergencies and that offers its resident the correct help at precisely the correct time, depending on the situation.

Equipment that captures data, such as RFID chips in the floor covering, motion sensors in the rooms, or everyday-type items equipped with sensors, are only parts of a much more complex overall system. The real core of the system is the software-supported networking and interpretation of the data provided by the sensors in accordance with current medical knowledge. Only this combination makes practical, context-sensitive support from the home automation system realistic.

The research performed at Fraunhofer IESE in the area of assisted living systems concentrates on the systems engineering of environments that independently recognize and assess situations on their own, based on networked sensor data. In a very general sense, this means that people are relieved of routine tasks and thus have more time for creativity. Furthermore, dangers can be averted. This should lead to cost savings not only in the health sector. Elderly persons and those requiring care will benefit from this in a particular way through better care" an obligation for society, whose importance should increase due to the demographic changes in society.

From Medical News Today

Motion sensors, virtual dinner companions and a talking pill could help baby boomers age more independently.

2007-02-18T21:16:00.000-08:00

Today, motion sensors can monitor the comings and goings of elderly Americans so they can live safely and independently in their own homes.
One day soon, a cellular telephone will detect any new quaver in the voice, and a cuff link will notice any worrisome change of gait.

Eventually a talking computer screen will tell the elderly whether they should take an aspirin for a headache -- considering their 12 or 16 or 20 other medications.

Yesterday's science fiction is tomorrow's assisted living, say prognosticators now watching 77 million baby boomers grow old.

The boomers' wish to age independently has businesses jumping in with a host of new products and services. The businesses include giants such as Intel and Pfizer as well as Minnesota enterprises such as Shoreview-based Ecumen, a nonprofit with senior housing centers in 80 communities, and HealthSense in Mendota Heights, which sells a monitoring system it calls eNeighbor.

And for good reason: One projection has the digital home-health market growing 36 percent a year, to $2.1 billion in 2010. And the United States is behind Europe and Japan when it comes to developing such technologies.

To help new technology reach Minnesota seniors, Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, plans to introduce a bill Monday with tax credits of up to $1,000 for assistive technologies -- everything from telephone amplifiers to devices yet to be imagined -- that help them stay in their homes.

Read the entire article in the StarTribube.com

Briding generations through beauty (non-tech)

2007-02-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

Glamour Gals Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to create “smiles that span all generations” by making over the elderly living in nursing homes.

Founded when Doyle was just 17 and a junior in high school, the main mission of the Glamour Gals Foundation is to bridge the generational gap between elderly women and teenage girls through the transformative power of makeovers. Motivated to start the organization after her grandmother’s death from loneliness, Doyle oversaw her first makeover in 2000.

“The great thing about Glamour Gals is that you can be really creative when an idea works,” she said. “You can experiment with it so much.”

From The Cornell Daily Sun

Ongoing Learning Increases Longevity, Researchers Say

2007-02-16T09:03:00.000-08:00

Education may be the long-sought-after fountain of youth. After decades of studies, researchers continue to find that those who keep their minds engaged in active education live longer and stave off the ravages of aging, such as memory loss and lethargy. The New York Times recently reported that having money or good health insurance "paled in comparison" to education as a crucial factor in graceful aging. "If you were to ask me what affects health and longevity," said City University of New York researcher Michael Grossman, "I would put education at the top of my list."

Comprehensive studies on the effects of ongoing learning on aging have been conducted for decades, and more recent studies by researchers called "health economists" only seem to support the contentions of 3rd Century BC philosopher, Aristotle, who said, "Education is the best provision for old age."

In 1999, Columbia University grad student Adriana Lleras-Muney focused her dissertation on 1969 research by three health economists who found that investing in education over the long haul yielded greater anti-aging effects than good medical care. In her ground-breaking study, Lleras-Muney found that when people reached age 35, their life expectancy was increased by 18 months if they completed an extra year of education.

Lleras-Muney's findings were supported by research conducted by Princeton's Anne Case. Case reported that "each additional year of schooling for men in the U.S. is associated with an 8 percent reduction in mortality, a result consistent with those found in many European countries. In surveys run in both the developed and developing world, people with greater levels of schooling report themselves to be significantly healthier."
Education and Brain Aerobics
Only two decades ago, most physicians and researchers felt that aging and its deleterious effects on the brain were inevitable. However, these recent findings offer hope to maintaining lifelong mental health. The Alzheimer's Association now sponsors "Maintain Your Brain" workshops throughout the country, encouraging people to stay physically and intellectually active. The workshop advises people to "enroll in courses at your local adult education center, community college[,] or other community group."

What is it about learning that arrests aging? Campus-based learning increases socialization and lessens loneliness and depression common among seniors. But that's only one factor. Even the very practice of taking online classes seems to activate parts of the brain that slow aging and increase memory, emotional engagement, and intellectual curiosity.

Dr. Gary Small, Director of the UCLA Center on Aging, has found a research niche in what he calls "Mental Aerobics." Using physical fitness training language, Small encourages everyone to "cross train" their minds to keep them in peak condition. Dr. Small's popular anti-aging book, The Longevity Bible, proposes an eight-step game plan to keep your body supple and your mind in peak condition. Number one on the list: "Sharpen Your Mind. Mental aerobics cross train your brain to significantly improve memory skills and brain efficiency. If you fix your brain for longevity, your body will follow in kind."

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in 2003 revealing that seniors over 75 years old who continued to read actively along with engaging in other physical and artistic activities had demonstrably lower rates of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

Lifelong learning combined with exercises to stimulate the mind builds what Small calls a cognitive reserve. Small says, "It's the use-it-or-lose-it theory. If you keep your brain cells active it improves their efficiency."

Education and Memory
A landmark 2005 study conducted by Toronto's Mellanie V. Springer and Cheryl Grady, Ph.D. revealed that the brains of older adults rely on the frontal cortex for memory and cognitive activity. Grady reported, "The higher the education, the more likely the older adult is to recruit frontal regions, resulting in a better memory performance."

Researchers have showed that the idle mind, like muscles in the body, atrophies from nonuse. With the exponential explosion of online colleges and classes, even homebound adults can keep their minds at play in the fields of learning. A 2006 Harris Poll found that of the 172 million American adults online, some 14 million were over the age of 65. Now more than ever, people of all ages can access a wide variety of educational choices to help keep their minds active and engaged.

Back in School
Seniors can get discounts for online and traditional study--even seniors who pursue a high school diploma or GED. Readily available online, education programs give those who always meant to finish high school the chance to do so--even if they've meant to finish for decades now. Even with a few years (or decades) on those wide-eyed high school grads, a non-traditional student can find a lot of satisfaction in an investment in him or herself rather than just trying to advance a career.

Adult learners can expect to find plenty of company in a classroom--online or on campus. A U.S. Department of Education report found that 84% of students in higher education are non-traditional, meaning that they haven't gone straight to college after high school. Subsequently, returning to school a little bit later in life for a diploma or beyond--an associate's, bachelor's, or other degree--has become the norm rather than the exception.

Graduate or Ph.D. programs can also be avenues to fulfill lifelong dreams or interests for older Americans, and this upper-level academic delivers the metal challenges that keep the brain young. But here's the bottom line: Ongoing learning helps keep the mind in shape and can increase longevity. As such, education is proving to be the crucial ingredient in healthy living and long life.

From Yahoo

Technology aims to keep elderly in own homes

2007-02-13T20:51:00.000-08:00

Cutting-edge technology is helping hundreds of people in Fenland (England) lead independent lives by allowing them to remain, where possible, in their own homes.

The technology not only gives confidence and peace of mind to the users but also to carers who feel less anxious knowing it is in place.

And the huge transformations it is making to the lives of both young and old gives Margi Fosh great job satisfaction.

From simple tools to sophisticated sensors, technology is being used 24 hours a day, reducing the need for hospital stays and residential care home places.

"Each referral is unique and is assessed as such," Margi explained. "Systems should not be introduced simply because the technology exists, only if it adds delivery of care and confidence."

Technology is being used to help people of all ages with both mental and physical problems. "We build up a picture of what each individual needs and research what products are available to help that person," said Margi. "It is not a one-size-fits-all thing."

Even something as simple as a special clock can make a difference to users. Margi said: "Imagine how debilitating it is not to know what day of the week it is. This can lead to increased anxiety and confusion, which could be prevented by the use of a simple orientation device - a calendar clock."

The clock displays the time and date, the day of the week and whether it is am or pm.

Automated pill boxes are commonly used for those with poor memory who take time-critical medication. The box can be set to deliver timed medication and will sound an alarm when it is due. Once the medication is taken out the pill box, the alarm stops and will reset ready for the next dose of medication. The box can be filled by a pharmacist or family member.

Excert from Cambs Times

Researchers at Motek's (Motion Technology) medical division have been working with a virtual reality program that could be used for rehabilitation, sp

2007-02-13T07:16:00.000-08:00

Another interesting post from Medgadget

Researchers at Motek's (Motion Technology) medical division have been working with a virtual reality program that could be used for rehabilitation, sports training, and even for the early diagnosis of balance disorders, Reuters reports. The system is not a new one, but is worthy of taking a look.

Motek Medical explains its system:

CAREN is a versatile, multi sensory system for diagnostic, rehabilitation, evaluation and registration of the human balance system. The system works in real-time and enables the creation of a variety of experiments in a controlled and repeatable environment by using different virtual reality principals. A motion platform, on which the object is standing, enables manipulation of the ground while a motion capture system, measures and registers the subject's movements, as well as making him a part of a predictive feedback loop.

The human balance system develops at an early stage in life. After sufficient time, unique, yet universal patterns emerge, enabling us to move freely and to cope with different situations (walking down the street, climbing a ladder, avoiding a slippery floor etc,). The use of these patterns becomes automated and unconscious and thus we find it hard to evaluate whether a learned pattern which was sufficient when we were kids, is still valid and optimal when we are adults, or when conditions changes. (illness, amputation etc.)

CAREN has an unique characteristic, which enables to get the subject into a predictive-feedback-loop, creating a situation, which does not exist in nature.

A state where the subject controls and influences the ground upon he stands in a dynamic and active way. In that kind of environment, any pattern or compensation-strategy, that the subject may have won't help him, thus, forcing full concentration and awareness in order to stay in balance. Therapists can use this rare opportunity and train with the subject new strategies for maintaining balance, as well as changing and improving current patterns. Additionally, the anomaly of the situation will force increased body-compensation-movements in order to stay in balance, making it easy for the therapist to recognize and evaluate the specific strategies being taken by the subject, as well as profoundly increasing diagnostic capabilities (specially early-diagnosis of balance disorder and balance-disorder related illnesses) and decreasing the time needed for accurate diagnosis and successful rehabilitation.

Top 10 'must have' home technology trends

2007-02-12T07:48:00.000-08:00

According to Dow Jones 'Market Watch'

The most technologically savvy homeowners bask in crystal-clear television screens when they're home and can control the lights while they're out of town. Without moving an inch, they can decide what music is playing in each room and can monitor the well being of their aging mother in a different city.

Making the list:

A home theater or media room. A home theater is a room dedicated solely to the viewing of movies and programs, designed with aspects such as sound quality in mind. A media room is incorporated in a home's living space and is more of a multipurpose room, where a homeowner can watch television, read a book or play a game. Home theaters can run anywhere from $15,000 to $150,000 and more depending on the components; one package displayed at the show from Lifeware included a media center, audio-video receiver, 200-disc DVD changer, 50-inch plasma television, six speakers, automated lighting control, remote and software for $31,000.

Home health-care products and installation. As the population ages, there's more demand for health-care products that take advantage of advances in technology. Patient-monitoring systems can allow a caregiver to check up on an elderly loved one from afar. Biometric monitoring devices can keep constant watch on a patient's vital signs.

Media Center Edition (MCE) computers. This audio/visual computer can help manage a home's various media sources, providing such features as surround-sound processing, as well as access to Internet radio and the one-touch recording of TV shows. A top-of-the-line Dell media center system fetches at least $5,500. Hewlett-Packard's HP z565 Digital Media Center starts at $3,000.

Microdisplay-based televisions. High-definition televisions are hot, including LCD (liquid crystal displays), DLP (digital light projection), LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) or LCD-based rear-projection TVs. Depending on size and type, prices for these products run the gamut.

Lighting and automation. Homes can be set up with the ability to control lighting and other features throughout the house from any room -- and any part of the world. Systems can also create lighting schemes and automation that might, for example, turn the lights down and close the curtains when a DVD is started, Hoshaw said. Honeywell and Home Director are two companies that offer such systems. Lifeware's deluxe system, which includes audio, lighting, HVAC and security controls in addition to its media capabilities, is priced at $54,000.

Security systems. New systems can protect a home while the owner is away by taking a snapshot of light usage in the house over the past two weeks, then mimicking the series while the owner is out of town.

Media servers. Homeowners are increasingly loading all of their media, including music and movie files, on one server, making files accessible in a central location. Hewlett-Packard has developed its HP MediaSmart Server, with the capability to handle 10 accounts on your home network, although the product is not yet for sale.

The iPod revolution. Many people have the popular music player from Apple -- or a competing mp3 player -- but increasingly homes are adding docking systems that allow more flexibility in using the device's media libraries. The Keyspan AV Dock for iPod, for example, will connect the device to a computer, stereo or TV and retails for $64.99 on Amazon.com.

Smart sound systems. Multiroom, multisource sound systems allow a homeowner to control the sound piping through rooms. Often with a touch of a key pad, a homeowner can control what's playing in each zone, independent of the rest of the house. Bose installed such whole-house systems in two of the showcase houses built specifically for the builders show.

Gaming rooms. They're not just your run-of-the-mill ping-pong table in the basement anymore. Video-game spaces have become increasingly common in a home, and are often set up around more traditional games, such as a billiard

'Intelligent' homes designed to help the elderly

2007-02-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

Scientists in Toronto say they have are developing artificially intelligent computer systems to help elderly people suffering from memory loss stay safely in their own homes.

"Often when a person gets moderate to severe levels of impairment, they are taken out of their home and put into a care facility," says lead scientist Dr. Alex Mihailidis, a mechanical and biomedical engineer and researcher at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.

"We are using artificial intelligence to support aging-in-place so that people can remain in their homes for as long as possible."

Mihailidis and his research team at the Intelligent Assistive Technology and Systems Lab, a joint venture of Toronto Rehab and the University, say they are the first in the world to test home-based artificial intelligence systems in clinical trials.

More than 750,000 Canadians will have Alzheimer's or a related dementia by the year 2031, the researchers say.

The systems are designed to enhance the safety of such people living at home, the researchers say.

One of their creations is a "talking" bathroom outfitted with a computer screen that provides video and verbal cues to assist with hand washing.

Clifford Solway sometimes needs some prompting for certain tasks. "I have a tendency to forget things," he admits.

However, in the intelligent home, a computer voice would prompt him.

Read the entire article in CTV.ca

Ever wonder where a loved one wandered to? Try these GPS shoes and wonder no more

2007-02-09T19:03:00.000-08:00

Isaac Daniel calls the tiny Global Positioning System chip he's embedded into a line of sneakers "peace of mind." He wishes his 8-year-old son had been wearing them when he got a call from his school in 2002 saying the boy was missing. The worried father hopped a flight to Atlanta from New York where he had been on business to find the incident had been a miscommunication and his son was safe.

Days later, the engineer started working on a prototype of Quantum Satellite Technology, a line of $325 to $350 adult sneakers that hit shelves next month. It promises to locate the wearer anywhere in the world with the press of a button. A children's line will be out this summer.

"We call it a second eye watching over you," Daniel said.

Read the entire article at FOXNews.com

High-tech 'smart' community planned

2007-02-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

Blueroof Technologies, a McKeesport nonprofit, presented city officials this week with a plan to develop an "independence zone" that they said would see McKeesport grow as a leading independent living community for senior citizens in the state.

The organization built a model home in McKeesport last year and displayed how a two-story, wood-frame house could be converted into a hi-tech home designed to enhance independent living for the disabled and elderly. Now it is proposing to build at least 20 such homes in McKeesport in the next few years.

The project will be the foundation of a research and development campus known as the Blueroof Smart Cottage Research and Development Center, Blueroof Executive Director John Bertoty said.

"We already have a model house in the zone," Mr. Bertoty said. "We're now looking at how we can expand on what we have already shown we can do to create an independent living community."

The proposed McKeesport Independence Zone will be a 10-acre development in the city's 3rd Ward, stretching from Walnut and Jenny Lind streets to Penny Street and Wigham Avenue.

Blueroof has partnered with the Quality of Life Technology Center, a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh that is dedicated to researching quality of life issues. It plans to build a "cluster community" of cottages in McKeesport that are affordable and equipped with the technology to meet the needs of challenged individuals, Mr. Bertoty said.

"We are very excited about this program," McKeesport Administrator Dennis Pittman said.

"Blueroof wants to make McKeesport a working laboratory for research and development, and that is something we are excited to see," he said.

Excerpts from post-gazzette.com

Changing demographics will need home-based health monitoring to keep the elderly out of institutional care

2007-02-08T20:45:00.000-08:00

There is no avoiding it: we are all getting older. By 2017 the UK will have almost two million more people aged between 65 and 84 than it did in 2004. And by 2025 the number of over 85s will have gone up by two-thirds.

Financially, that means tricky pension arrangements and changes to the retirement age. But it is not just about money. Longer life means higher incidences of chronic complaints, such as heart disease, and more elderly people requiring care. In the context of weakening family structures and changing roles, particularly for women, the pressure on hospitals and care homes looks unsustainable.

Clearly there is no simple solution. But a good start is to find ways to help people stay out of institutional care.

This is where technology comes in. Telecare is an umbrella term for a range of networked systems to monitor safety and health at home. Examples include environmental and movement sensors, and specific clinical measurements such as heart rate or blood pressure.

Used effectively, telecare has the potential to change the structure of health and social care – helping the chronically ill stay out of hospital and allowing the elderly to live for longer in their own homes.

The financial arguments look promising. Whitehall’s Social Exclusion Unit estimated last year that reducing institutionalisation by just a single per cent could save £3.8bn.

Even more hopefully, preventative technology chimes with Labour’s wider choice agenda plans to shift healthcare away from district hospitals to community organisations.

So far, so good. But those initiatives that already exist are patchy and small scale. And while central government is starting to take an interest – with £80m-worth of Preventative Technology Grants and nascent plans for larger-scale trials – telecare is still very much on the fringes.

A report last week from the government’s national director for older people, specifically looking at how to ‘bring care closer to home’, makes no mention of technology at all.

Even the most successful schemes say the biggest challenge is proving that they make a real difference and do save money. In the public sector’s increasingly straitened budgetary climate, only a business case with clear return on investment stands much chance of securing funding.

Establishing the potential for telecare and how best to exploit it needs clarity and commitment from central government. There is no time to lose – the clock is ticking...

Article from Computing.co.uk

Loneliness May Up Alzheimer's Risk

2007-02-06T21:19:00.000-08:00

Lonely individuals are twice as likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease as those who are not lonely, according to a new study.

Researchers focused on the effects of emotional isolation, or loneliness, in which people perceive themselves as feeling socially isolated and disconnected from others -- sometimes even if they're surrounded by family and friends.

"It turns out people who have this feeling of being socially isolated are at higher risk of developing Alzheimer's," says David A. Bennett, MD, co-author of the study and director of the Rush University Medical Center Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago.

Though a small social network of friends and family has been linked in previous research to a higher risk of Alzheimer's, Bennett's group focused on a person's perception of being alone, regardless of their social network size.

"We are talking about a tendency to feel isolated and alone in the world," he says. "You can have a small network and not feel isolated; or you can have a large network but don't know how to connect, and feel isolated."

Read the entire article on CBS News

'Network of Networks' - a step towards evidence based medicine

2007-02-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

President Bush will propose a new initiative to develop a "network of networks" when he announces his fiscal year 2008 budget proposal on February 5. That was the most significant news coming out of a briefing put on in Washington last Friday by Health Affairs to coincide with publication of a special issue titled "A Rapid-Learning System."

The special issue is meant to focus attention on how a national system that knits together millions of electronic health records (EHRs) can provide almost instantaneous answers on the effectiveness of various aspects of medical care and medications. Such feedback is now available only after completion of a clinical trial, which can take 10 years or more. Moreover, the results of those clinical trials are not particularly relevant to most patients or their physicians because of the narrow selection criteria used.

The difference between clinical trial patients who are generally younger and have just one target condition and, say, poorer, multi-condition Medicare and Medicaid patients leads to an "inference gap" that forces physicians to surmise or guess about how to treat their patients. "We are straddling the inference gap," said Paul Wallace, M.D., medical director of health and productivity management programs at Kaiser Permanente, "and it is getting wider."

More real-time, realistic medical information is starting to be generated by isolated networks such as the Cancer Research Network funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Vaccine Safety Datalink funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the private sector, Kaiser Permanente has taken the lead, and now has EHRs for half of its 8.5 million patients, according to Wallace. Kaiser is focusing on an "early proof of concept" that makes use of its "Health Connect" system to better target care for its 40,000 patients who are diagnosed with cancer each year, said Wallace.

But Lynn Etheredge, consultant to the Health Insurance Reform Project at George Washington University, pointed to the 85 million enrollees in Medicare and Medicaid as a critical population "where we most need an evidence base" because those individuals do not resemble, for the most part, the population of participants in clinical trials, on whose results much of the nation's medical practice is based. But Etheredge, who was the driving force behind publication of the special issue, called rapid learning "a work in progress."

Etheredge pointed to the "network of networks" initiative that will be in Bush's 2008 budget proposal as evidence that good things are happening. Carolyn Clancy, M.D., director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRC), disclosed the initiative, which she did not describe except to say that it would allow the AHRC to combine unspecified databases.

When contacted after the press conference, Karen Migdail, a spokeswoman for the AHRC, which will have responsibility for this "network of networks, explained it would spring from the AHRC's Effective Health Care Program announced in September 2005. That program has spawned a network of 13 Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions about Effectiveness research centers (referred to as DEcIDE) which have been working to fill knowledge gaps about treatment effectiveness through use of de-identified medical data available through insurers, health plans and other organizations.

Article from Health-IT World

34% of Elderly U.S. Residents Using Long-Term Care Insurance Claim Coverage for In-Home Care, According to Study

2007-02-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

About 34% of elderly U.S. residents who have long-term care insurance and claimed benefits used it last year to pay for in-home care, according to a study released last week by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, the AP/Baltimore Sun reports. Nearly 30% of long-term care payments in 2006 were for assisted living costs, and about 36% of payments were for nursing home care, the study found. Total payout for long-term care in 2006 amounted to $3.3 billion. Association Executive Director Jesse Slome said the key finding of the study was that "although long-term care insurance is closely linked in consumers' minds with nursing home care," people are more likely to use their long-term care insurance to pay for in-home care or assisted living facilities. The association estimates that about eight million U.S. residents have long-term care insurance through an individual policy or employer-sponsored plan. Slome said people who do not have a lot of savings, are uninsured or are Medicaid beneficiaries are more likely to choose nursing home care (AP/Baltimore Sun, 2/4).

In-Home Care Technology
The New York Times on Sunday examined innovations that help caregivers remotely monitor the health and activities of an elderly family member who lives independently. According to the Times, "With the number of older Americans growing rapidly, products and services to help adult children care for their parents are on the rise." For example, a home health alarm system called QuietCare can be used to monitor household activities, and the alarm company alerts the caregiver of any deviations from normal routines. Caregivers also can track the activities online. Another type of system called iCare Health Monitoring focuses on collecting specific health information, such as blood pressure, which can then be tracked online by caregivers and the elderly themselves. Nurses monitor the system but do not provide constant supervision. However, Robyn Stone, executive director of the Institute for the Future of Aging Services, said, "There are privacy and ethical issues" involved with in-home monitoring systems, and she recommends that the elderly consent to the monitoring. Caregivers also could hire geriatric care managers, who oversee family members' appointments, evaluate nursing homes or coordinate care between different health specialists, but the "industry is largely unregulated," according to the Times. According to Stone, "Technology can be a complement to human resources, but many of these do not obviate the need for humans" (Larson, New York Times, 2/4).

Posted on the KaiserNetwork.org

Online photo editor review

2007-02-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

Here's a pretty good review of online editors from FranticIndistries.

He reviews

Concluding: As we’ve seen in the test, options are one thing, and real world usage is another. After applying some basic commands to the image, I’ve gotten very interesting results. Picnik’s auto-fix worked best, but its auto-colors did more harm than good, giving the image an unnatural blueish hue. The enhance feature of PXN8 definitely did too much (look at the loss of detail in the trees), while Snipshot’s was quite a bit better but still not perfect. Fauxto’s sharpen wasn’t useful at all (and interestingly enough, although Fauxto has the most options, when it comes to sharpening you only get one option: sharpen, without any additional settings). Preloadr’s auto-contrast was solid, producing similar results to Snipshot. Finally, I couldn’t find an auto-fix option in Picture2Life, so I tried with sharpen, but none of the settings produced remotely acceptable results.

As usual, there is no clear winner here, as each application offers something unique. For real everyday usage I would recommend Picnik and PXN8; you should definitely look at Fauxto if you want complexity and don’t mind a couple of bugs, while Snipshot is great if you want to include it on your own web site. Preloadr is good, but only for Flickr users, while Picture2Life needs a GUI overhaul and a change to some of its image processing algorithms, but it also offers several interesting and unique options. So, the moment when I’ll tell everyone in the office to ditch whatever software they’re using and switch to one of these apps is not yet here, but I feel it’s just around the corner.

If you're looking for something beyond an online Adobe Photoshop, check out new tools like FrameFree who's pixel matching technology animates still images in an easy to use environment.

In Elder Care, Signing on Becomes a Way to Drop By

2007-02-03T17:14:00.000-08:00

Connie Araps, 57, of Delray Beach, Fla., thought that her father, Tom Araps, 87, was managing just fine on his own. But when he came to stay with her for a few months in 2005, she found that he was skipping meals, sleeping all morning and not taking daily walks.

To satisfy her father’s desire to live alone, but to ease her mind about his safety, Ms. Araps found an apartment for him less than a mile from her home and had it equipped with QuietCare, a home health alarm system provided by ADT Security Services.

She drops by his apartment often, and logs into a Web site several times a day to check on him. Motion sensors track how often Mr. Araps opens the refrigerator, when he gets out of bed and how long he stays in the bathroom. If his normal patterns vary, the alarm company alerts her.

One day, the company called her to say that no one had entered or left the apartment all day. It turned out that a home health aide had failed to show up, and her father had not received his diabetes medication. Ms. Araps rushed over and made sure that her father took his pills.

“We are so pleased with all the technology,” she said. “I don’t think we would have let him live alone without it.” On the market since August, the QuietCare system costs $199 to install, and monitoring starts at $79.95 a month. In addition to the QuietCare system, Ms. Araps had the alarm company install video cameras showing the floors and the foot of her father’s bed, so she could see if he had fallen.

About 19 million Americans, aside from paid providers, are caring for someone over the age of 75, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving. With the number of older Americans growing rapidly, products and services to help adult children care for their parents are on the rise.

Some products, like QuietCare, use existing alarm technology. Other systems collect health information like blood pressure, weight and medication use and transmit it to adult children or other care providers via the Web. In addition, the emerging profession of geriatric care management is making it possible for family members to delegate various care duties.

Nursing homes have been using health alarm systems like QuietCare for several years, and a few allow family members to view data remotely. “I have a button on my browser that says, ‘Where’s Pop,’ ” said Barry Jacobson, 61, whose 83-year-old father has Alzheimer’s disease and lives at Oatfield Estates, a retirement community in Milwaukie, Ore.

Mr. Jacobson, who lives 300 miles away on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington, can log on at any time to see his father’s whereabouts. Because all residents and staff wear badges that emit a digital signal, he can tell exactly where his father is and who else is in the room.

“My sister in San Diego logged on at midnight one night and saw he was in the kitchen,” he said. “He always was a big ice cream eater.” Elite Care, the company that owns Oatfield Estates, plans to introduce a home version of its technology this year.

Mr. Jacobson knows that a staff of care providers is monitoring his father’s data, ready to respond instantly to problems. The level of responsiveness varies, however, with home-based monitoring systems.

Potential buyers “need to do their due diligence on companies to make sure they have the capacity on the other end to respond to the information,” said Robyn I. Stone, executive director of the Institute for the Future of Aging Services, the research arm of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.

QuietCare uses a 24-hour call center staffed with operators trained to help the elderly in emergencies. Family care providers define emergency situations — a parent staying in the bathroom for more than an hour, for example, or not opening the medicine cabinet all day. They instruct the system when and whom to call, or to send a text or e-mail message.

Another system, SeniorSafe@Home, to be introduced in the fall, will staff its call center with nurses who will monitor data from a combination of motion sensors, electronic medication dispensers and fall detectors.

A system called iCare Health Monitoring uses a very different model. It is not meant to serve as an emergency alarm system. Instead, it tries to prevent emergencies by allowing care providers, family members and older people themselves keep track of specific health data, like blood pressure, weight or medications use. Nurses monitor the system, but not around the clock.

Using a small electronic device with a text screen and four input buttons, the system asks a series of daily multiple-choice questions about an older person’s health. Family members or other care providers can view the answers online and look for any telltale changes in health. Available through http://www.cvs.com/ and some CVS pharmacy stores since July, the system costs $99 to install and $49.95 a month for monitoring.

Alberta Jackson, 78, of Aurora, Colo., who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, uses iCare to track her lung function every day. She spends about eight minutes a day answering questions. Once when she responded that she was not feeling well, a nurse called within minutes to check on her.

“It makes me feel like there’s somebody on my shoulder, making sure I’m O.K.,” Mrs. Jackson said.

Of course, not everyone wants someone looking over their shoulder. “There are privacy and ethical issues,” Ms. Stone said. “Where’s the line between motion sensors and Big Brother?”

Excerpt from NY Times article

101 Things To Do With A Mobile Phone In Healthcare

2007-02-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

Repost from MedGadget

In the not too distant future, doctors will be replaced by robots and patients will have advanced cell phones capable of screening for cancer, detecting MRSA, and monitoring wound healing. At least that is the opinion of the Wireless Health Care Report on the 101 medical uses of cell phones.

When sites offering medical advice first appeared on the World Wide Web few GPs believed that, within a decade, they would encounter patients who used the Internet to become specialists in a particular ailment. Before the arrival of the 'informed patient' the GP was expected to provide a diagnosis, then recommend a course of treatment. Today many patients believe they already have a diagnosis and merely wish to have it confirmed by a series of tests. The question is no longer 'Doctor what is wrong with me?' but 'Doctor when can my treatment begin?' Mobile and wireless ehealth will enhance and broaden the scope of this type of self diagnosis.

The market for ehealth technology could be approaching a tipping point. In this report we look at a number of ehealth companies that have been formed by surgeons. We feel that companies such as Intelligent Medical Systems and Xenetec, that are run by clinicians with first hand experience of clinical processes, will accelerate the take up of wireless ehealth by giving credibility to ehealth as a technology and providing reference sites within the healthcare sector itself.

Peer pressure will drive the ehealth market, especially if consultants start reaping the benefits of venture capital backing and IPOs. The report states that, in the not too distant future, the ehealth market will enter a new phase where clinicians themselves encourage the automation of clinical processes.

This is happening as a new generation of ehealth products and services, based on wireless and mobile technology, is putting diagnosis and treatment management into the hands of the patient. Companies such as Card Guard and Vitaphone are offering suites of wireless ehealth applications - which include blood pressure, heart rate and blood glucose monitoring - to patients, with or without the support of a conventional healthcare provider.

This report describes 101 examples of the use of wireless and mobile technology in healthcare. While some of the applications are speculative, for example a mobile device to detect MRSA, others, such as SMS based patient reminders, have already been deployed and are earning revenue for vendors.

10.1 Appointment Reminders (SMS)
10.2 Patient Support (SMS)
10.3 Medication Reminders (SMS)
10.4 Appointment Booking
10.5 Medical Data On SIM Card
10.6 Patient Information For Relatives
10.7 Peer Support For Patients
10.8 Post Cardiac Surgery Support
10.9 Accessing Patient Records
10.10 Access To Dietary Information
...

Some are speculative? Cell phones as endoscopes might be considered speculative . . .

Review all 100 uses at Wireless Health Care Report . . .

Create your own social network - Ning.com

2007-02-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

Soon kids will be using online networks for school work and, one day soon, in the workplace, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about: Ning.com.

It's a make-your-own social network web site where you can use different templates to set up private social networks to collaborate on projects, share videos and photos. As this Cnet article notes, the site has tools that allow users to customize a social network to make it unique, yet private.

One of the site's founders is Marc Andreesson, also a co-founder of Netscape. In her NetFamilyNews blog, Anne Collier links to a Wall Street Journal article on how teachers are using Ning.com to share private discussions on literature projects, and social activists are creating public ones to drum up support for causes. It's free, though you can pay for storage options if you upload a lot of photos and videos.

Social networks are not always just about socializing, but they are about communicating and community.

Orginally posted by Dory Devlin at YahooTech

Shift Left

2007-02-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

Mr. Grove says he is alarmed by several structural issues involving health care in America, notably, the huge number of uninsured, who are often forced to get primary care in emergency rooms.

To explain "Shift left," Mr. Grove describes the bottom axis of a scale in which products and services grow more full-featured, complicated and expensive as you move to the right. To "Shift left" on this scale is to, in effect, "Keep it simple, stupid."

Specifically, Mr. Grove is a big fan of low-cost, walk-in clinics, the sort beginning to appear in stores like Wal-Mart. He says they provide basic medical care for the uninsured, and also take some strain off of America's overloaded emergency rooms. But one thing missing from this emerging clinic infrastructure is a good system of medical record-keeping.

Mr. Grove, naturally, thinks technology can help. But rather than designing an elaborate and technically sophisticated medical-database system, something virtually every tech company is now trying to do, Mr. Grove suggests the exact opposite. Shift left; keep the record of a patient's visit in, for example, a generic but Web-accessible word-processing file.

Just like the early PC, it will be far from ideal, but it will be a start, and it can get better over time. The alternative, he says, is to wait endlessly for a perfect technology.

Students of business history will recognize the idea of a plain-vanilla medical record as an example of a "disruptive technology," which is initially opposed by powerful incumbents with a vested economic interest in shifting ever-rightward. So which powerful incumbents might oppose him now?

Read the full article on the post-gazette.com

The Challenge of Population Ageing is Global

2007-02-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

Dr Alex Kalache, Head of the World Health Organisation's Ageing and the Lifecourse Program warned of the social and economic issues associated with a fast-growing ageing population, particularly in the poorer countries of the world.

Dr Kalache outlined the current situation, explaining that there had been a revolution in world's population with no historical precedent. In spite of the developed world's preoccupation with an ageing population, this pales in comparison to the effects on less developed countries. Soon two billion of the world's population will be over 60 and 1.7 billion of these people will be in poor countries. This change is happening in the span of less than one generation.

For example, he described, it took France 115 years to double its number of older people. Brazil, on the other hand, has experienced the same change in just 19 years.

He pointed out that: The developed world became rich before it became old, but the developing countries are becoming old before they have ever become rich.'

21st Century problem

In response to the lecture, Simon Biggs, Director of King's Institute of Gerontology and Professor of Gerontology said: We are only just waking up to the scale of these changes. They will affect every aspect of adult life, from relations between the generations to those between almost every country on the globe. How we respond to adult ageing is becoming a defining problem for the 21st century.

From Media-Newswire.com

Couple welcome Big Brother gadgets

2007-01-31T21:49:00.000-08:00

A couple in their 80s are among the first in Hull to benefit from a new device which should help hundreds of older and disabled people stay at home.

Stella Prince, 88, who suffers from nocturnal epilepsy, and her husband Henry had their equipment installed yesterday.

On offer is a range of sensors – including one which alerts a central control room when the user has been out of bed too long. Others include movement, heat and door sensors.
Two years ago Mrs Prince suddenly fell ill and began to suffer from falls, and the pair seriously considered moving into a smaller home or sheltered care. The new devices promise to give them both peace of mind.

Mr Prince said: "I'm always afraid of going back to sleep in case my wife has a seizure.
"But with the sensors they are going to install in bed, if she doesn't return to bed within a certain time the alarm goes back to the control room, and they then can call me on a speaker phone to check if she's OK."

Mr Prince is also looking forward to having movement sensors installed so that he can go out safe in the knowledge that if she falls, the control room will find out about it fast.
He said: "With the sensors we can feel much more restful and a lot less stressed.
"Someone said it is Big Brother watching you – and I said it is Big Brother's friend looking after us."

"Our service users are very keen to make use of this new technology – and we are anticipating high demand."

Read the entire article on the Yorkshire Post

Intel and IDA Ireland to invest $30 million in Technology Research for Independent Living Centre in Ireland

2007-01-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin TD today announced that Intel Corporation is to set up a Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) Centre in Ireland. The centre, which is supported by IDA Ireland, the Irish State agency for promotion of foreign direct investment, will involve significant research capabilities to address the challenges of ‘independent living’ for older people.

Approximately $30 million will be invested in the TRIL Centre over a period of three years and Intel will collaborate with several leading Irish universities, including UCD, TCD and NUI Galway to create one of the largest research efforts of this type in the world.

Read the entire article on FinFacts Ireland

Access your health records from cell phones

2007-01-30T15:28:00.000-08:00

Members of Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania will be able to check key health information from their cell phones.

Some people keep tabs on their favorite stocks using their cell phones. Soon, members of Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania will be able to check their diagnoses and other key health information in the same way: from their cell phones.

Starting at the end of March, Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania, known as BCNEPA, will begin providing 100,000 of its members--and later to all 600,000 members--secure electronic access to their own and their dependents' personal health records. The information, which includes recent diagnoses, prescribed medications, allergies, and immunization history, will be culled from the insurer's claims data as well as information that the member supplements.

Read the entire article on InformationWeek

The Power of Quicken, Applied to Health Care

2007-01-30T08:05:00.000-08:00

I love Intuit product. I use Quickbooks for accounting software and Quicken for personal finances. It makes organizing finances as easy as one click.

Now think about that simplictity to personal health care, and you get Quicken Health

Quicken Health: Coming Soon! Explanations of benefits! Doctor bills! FSA reimbursements! HSA Substantiations! The list of paperwork & information people have to manage for their basic healthcare goes on and on and until now, there has been no help.

Imagine a solution that will consolidate and organize the flood of healthcare information in one click. Imagine an easy to use tool people will turn to when they need to make better healthcare decisions. Imagine leveraging the lessons learned from connecting Quicken Personal Finance Software to more than 4,000 financial institutions. Now imagine Quicken - for healthcare.
Right now, Quicken is developing products and services that will simplify the way millions of American consumers manage their healthcare.

Product UpdatesFor the first time, millions of people will have the ability to view and organize the flood of information coming from a variety of healthcare sources, including medical bills, insurance payments and medical records from physicians and hospitals, into one easy-to-use system.

The first of the new Quicken-branded healthcare products will help consumers make better healthcare decisions and will help them save time and money.
Our engineers and designers are currently talking to hundreds of people across the United States to make sure that the final product, available in 2007, will truly change the way people think about their healthcare.

Orginal post on MedGadget

Nursing by remote control

2007-01-29T19:15:00.000-08:00

In Australia, nurses will soon monitor patients at home with video phones and medical sensors, eliminating the need for hundreds of thousands of costly home visits.

Read the entire article on AdelaideNow

Instead of using poor services like this, why not find what you want on the Internet

2007-01-28T11:39:00.000-08:00

It's meant to be funny ;)

Cell phone designed for seniors

2007-01-25T18:18:00.000-08:00

Samsung Jitterbug. Let us know what you think of this device.

Seinfeld "The Old Man": Try to Help the Elderly

2007-01-25T18:03:00.000-08:00

Pretty funny ;)

We're living longer...

2007-01-25T17:59:00.000-08:00

Emma Faust Tillman, who marked her 114th birthday last fall by crediting God for her longevity, has become the world's oldest known person.

From The Associate Press

Cellphones: Now Managing Your Diabetes, Hypertension, & Asthma

2007-01-25T11:24:00.000-08:00

Orginally posted at MedGadget

Since its conception in 2002, Think Positive Medical (hence the t+ logo) has been striving to make cellphones an integral part of the way patients monitor their health.

Diabetes
With t+Diabetes' simple technology, your mobile phone, and by linking to your own secure web page, you can gain a greater understanding of your condition, and see how your way of life affects your blood glucose levels.

With t+ Diabetes, we provide:
Instant feedback relating to the data that you input into your mobile phone - enabling you to make decisions immediately to improve your self management.

A secure web page where you can share information with your doctor or nurse without visiting their surgery

Membership of the t+ Health Club, with the reassurance of a Specialist Nurse based in Oxford available by phone or email and monthly reports summarising your results.

Blood Pressure
t+ blood pressure is a lifestyle management tool to help you manage your blood pressure more effectively and limit long term complications. Using your mobile phone and linking to your own personal secure web page, t+ blood pressure helps you to understand the factors that affect your management of blood pressure and enables you to make simple lifestyle choices to improve your self management.

Asthma
t+ asthma is a personal management tool to help you manage your asthma more effectively and limit long term complications. Using your mobile phone and linking to your own personal secure web page, t+ asthma helps you to take control of your asthma and understand the lifestyle factors that affect your self management.

Oh, and they are currently recruiting customers to participate in their Case Studies Program . . .
Would this be an interesting technology for you seniors? If so we could work with Think Positive Medical to provide field support of this technology for free. Please comment to let us know.

Tried of dining alone? Accenture's may have a solution for you

2007-01-24T09:01:00.000-08:00

Technology has come up with the answer for people living along who dislike solitary meals: the virtual family dinner, where relatives hundreds of miles apart get together for a chat.

With Accenture’s new technology, lonely diners can transform mealtimes into a family affair using an interactive screen

Accenture, the consulting company, is exploiting the explosion in broadband access to provide lonely people, notably the elderly, with a way to get together with relatives as often as they'd like, updating the traditional family meal.

The concept is simple. An elderly woman in, say, Scotland, prepares a meal and, as she sits down to eat, a screen, which is transparent when not in use, pops up at the end of the table.

A computer program runs through a directory of pre-registered family members and friends to find someone who is "available for dinner" - or, at least, a conversation.

The virtual guest's image is then projected on to the screen and the solitary diner no longer feels that she is eating alone.

"We are trying to really bring back the kind of family interactions we used to take for granted," said Dadong Wan, a senior researcher in Accenture's laboratories in Chicago.

Recent figures showed that more than half of women aged over 75 lived alone, and a survey by Help the Aged disclosed that television was the main source of company for nearly half of all over-65s.

"The whole idea is to make sure they eat right," said Mr Wan. "Recent studies have already shown that people at high risk of under-nourishment consume more than 100 calories extra per meal if they eat with someone else present."

When a prototype becomes available, in no more than a year or two, it is likely to cost up to £500 per household, Mr Wan said. Insurance companies and Government agencies could one day help to pay for the system, much as they do for home helps, once they see its benefits.

From Telegraph.co.uk

European Telecare study shows postive results

2007-01-22T20:33:00.000-08:00

“Some elderly patients don’t like the sound of technology, but when explained to them, they realise that it could help them and give them the independence they want. It makes them more active and confident, as they know that help is on hand if they need it, but they don’t need a carer to be with them all the time. It is clearly making a difference to patients.”

“We focused on three random patients who we felt would get the most benefit from the implementation of telecare in their homes. The first was an 80 year old woman, who lives alone and suffers from Parkinson’s diseases. She also has visual impairment and mobility issues and has fallen on several occasions. We put her on a telecare falls programme costing."

“The second was an 87 year old woman who has mobility issues due to an earlier stroke and has memory and hearing problems. She is cared for her by her son. By implementing stroke monitoring technology, we can save on carer time and residential care fees for at least six months bringing a potential saving of £11,387.”

She said another example of benefits measured included an 80 year old man who has reduced mobility and long term memory loss, who had suffered from falls, and relies on his two daughters to remind him to take his medicine."

Exerpts from E-Health Insider

Soon-to-be-seniors poised to change their communities

2007-01-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

Some social service planners – many of whom are boomers themselves – fear that the sheer size of the boomer population could overwhelm the sometimes tenuous social service network that helps seniors cope with the physical and other challenges that go along with aging – especially in rural areas. Most agree that such a profound demographic shift is sure to affect every aspect of communities – political, social and economic – as boomers begin to require more health care, social services and living assistance.

Federal and state officials have encouraged local communities to examine their needs and resources to come up with plans that combine public and private resources to provide health care, social services, transportation, housing, job opportunities and other services to help all seniors stay healthy, independent and engaged in their communities.

Read more how Adam's County is planning and using volunteers to create support systems in the Journal Gazette

50+ surfers finding a social life online

2007-01-20T20:16:00.000-08:00

Like millions of teenagers around the world, Sue Bloom spends several hours socializing online every day. She posts pictures, meets new friends, updates her blog and runs a popular online photography group with almost 500 members. The only thing is, Bloom isn’t a teenager or a twentysomething college student — she’s a 58-year-old art historian. And the brand-new site where she hangs out, Eons.com, is for baby boomers (and older) only: You have to be at least 50 to join. “Social-networking sites are wonderful for people of my generation,” says Bloom, who lives in Maryland. “We’ve always been really social, and they’re all about developing a community.”

Read the whole article on the Daily Herald

Wonder where you elderly parent wandered off to?

2007-01-19T15:42:00.000-08:00

Cell phone GPS tracking could also be used to locate the whereabouts of your children and offer protection to elderly relatives should something happen and they need urgent assistance.

The development of communications technology has long since surpassed the sole ability to access others when they are mobile. Today, mobile communication devices are becoming much more technologically advanced and offer more than the ability to just carry on a conversation. Cell phone GPS tracking is one of those advances.

GPS or Global Positioning System tracks your location by interpreting the data received from 3 or more satellites. This has made GPS a popular feature in cars as a navigational aid.
All cell phones constantly broadcast a radio signal, even when not on a call. The cell phone companies have been able to estimate the location of a cell phone for many years using triangulation information from the towers receiving the signal. However, the introduction of GPS technology into cell phones has meant that cell phone GPS tracking now makes this information a lot more accurate.

With GPS technology now more commonplace in many new cell phones, this means that the location of anyone carrying a compatible cell phone can be accurately tracked at any time. Cell phone GPS tracking can therefore be a useful feature for business owners and fleet managers who need to be able to keep track of their vehicle movements.

Cell phone GPS tracking can also be a useful feature to the emergency services or police when responding to a 911 call from a GPS cell phone. For this reason, the FCC has legislated that wireless networks provide location information for 911 calls made from cell phones. These are known as E911 calls.

As technology advance even further, future features will be even more powerful. Imagine GPS cell phones used as a navigational device. Based on the cell phone GPS tracking signal, they could be used to find your way to a location, calculate your speed based on your location change over time, from this calculate your estimated arrival time, suggest an alternative route and even phone the person you are calling to see with your ETA! Of course in car GPS navigation systems can already perform many of these tasks, however it is the portability of cell phones that makes them so useful for this technology.

Originally posted in The Business News

An Electronic Pill Calendar

2007-01-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

“The idea came to me when a relative who was taking multiple medications for asthma came to stay with me,” says Dr. W. Kent Guion, associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Allied Health Sciences. “She was often confused about which pills she had to take in the morning and which pills she had to take at night. Many of her medications also looked the same and it was easy for her to get one confused with the other.”

“The printout also shows warnings about similar-looking pills to protect patients from taking the wrong medication,” he says.

The computer program interfaces with computer software at major pharmacies.
“The idea is that pharmacists won’t have to do any extra work,” Dr. Guion says. “When the prescription comes in, they can scan it and the calendar printout will automatically generate. It won’t require any extra keystrokes.”

Orginal post Onthepharm

Technology helps seniors live independently

2007-01-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

My mother had an aneurysm when I was in high school...luckily she survived and is living to date. She still lives in the house we grew up in alone....but likes it that way. So I keep my eye out for new technologies, services or social activities which make her life better.

Here's an old article from the FairfaxDigital "Technology helps elderly live alone" which highlights talking washing machines, mirrors that double as television screens and a virtual gardens.