With a large generation entering retirement and quickly approaching their senior years, a growing segment of the population is seeking ways to stay in touch with, and care for, their loved ones. The good news is that today’s smart home technology makes it simple to care for aging parents, whether they live with you or are hundreds of miles away. Here are a few key functions and products to consider that can provide peace of mind.
Imagine that you just delivered a baby three months early and are sitting in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) next to an plastic box (i.e. an incubator) supporting the child who was nestled safely within the womb just 12 hours ago. Tiny and translucent, your new hero is fighting for life with all 1 pound 4 ounces of his being. Though connected to machines to help him breathe, stay warm, and nourished, the alarms and noise of the monitors make you wonder what is going wrong. Work that your body was doing 12 hours ago has now been completely handed off to a team of strangers, medical professionals that are kind and highly skilled, but are completely new to you.
Researchers with Northwestern University have used a telehealth platform called Communication Bridge to help patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, dementia or primary progressive aphasia by connecting them with speech-language pathologists. For many of the patients, the result is an improvement in their ability to recall lost words or concepts.
Though this progress is exciting, Emily J. Rogalski, associate professor of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, cautioned the treatment is not a cure. Instead, it allows health professionals to “delay some of the progression” of dementia and “maximize a person’s remaining abilities so they can compensate” much longer than usual.
Telehealth services are available to providers in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada
Helping healthcare providers connect with patients in some of the most underserved areas of the Southwest is the mission of the Southwest Telehealth Resource Center (SWTRC).
One of 14 telehealth resource centers in the U.S., the SWTRC was established in 2009 under the aegis of the Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP), headquartered at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson.
Tucson’s recent designation as a UNESCO City of Gastronomy is a tribute to our long history of harvesting plants native to the Sonoran desert and heritage plants brought over by the Spanish, as well as the innovation and local mindedness of our community, and the multitude of food system initiatives constantly striving to improve the food security of our diverse populations.
A food system consists of the entire process from which food moves from farm to fork, including production, processing, packing, distribution, consumption, and food waste management. A healthy, sustainable food system is directly connected to public health goals like reducing hunger and obesity, protection and conservation of natural resources, and facilitating economic growth.
“Should I stay or should I go?” So go the lyrics from the English punk rock band, The Clash, in a song about one couple’s dilemma over whether to stay together or break up.
The same question might just as well apply to another dilemma—this one pertaining to people considering treatment for substance abuse. At a time when telemedicine is revolutionizing mental health services, bringing talk therapy into the home via online videoconferencing and other mobile technologies, is it better to travel for treatment or stay put?
We all know that telehealth is driven by the desire to make affordable healthcare available to anyone, anytime, anywhere, and that advances in technology have facilitated the effort. But what powers telehealth and even healthcare general? At the American Telemedicine Association’s Annual Meeting (April 23-25, 2017 in Orlando, FL) the answer was clear – women!
The year is 2030 and the days of small practices are coming to a tragic end, as the virtual capabilities of large and innovative health systems have become integrated into the lives of patients worldwide. Patient monitoring is constant, blending into the lifestyles of patients who have grown accustom to an emerging world of integrated healthcare in consumer technology. Healthcare has finally reached the golden age of patient empowerment and engagement in no small part due to telemedicine.
It used to be (back in the old days) that “doing” telemedicine (TM) was so new and foreign to everyone that it was considered research, and thus required—at most institutions—human subjects or Internal Review Board (IRB) approval. Patients had to be consented into a study prior to engaging in any sort of telemedicine encounter.
Thankfully, for the most part, those days are gone. While some institutions may still require IRB consent, that number has decreased significantly. Of course, if you are conducting a scientific experiment using a new telemedicine device or some new procedure, that study will have to go through the usual IRB approvals and involved patients will need to be consented.
Gerald Hornbeck is a 73-year-old Veteran who lives with his wife in Gilbert, Arizona, approximately 40 miles from the Phoenix Veterans Administration Health Care System (PVAHCS).
In 2012, after being diagnosed with end-stage heart failure, he was implanted with a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) at the University of Utah Medical Center. Since then, the LVAD has taken over the task of pumping blood to the rest of his body.