Health International Day 2010 - New Business Models in Europe

UBI-SERV participated in Health International Day 2010 - New Business Models in Europe, 5 May 2010, organized by Finnish Healthcare Technology Association (FiHTA) and Finpro.

Workshop on ICT Environment, Safety and Security in Baltic Sea

I attended the Workshop on "Information and Communication Technology Services for Environment, Safety and Security in the Baltic Sea" at Holiday Inn Helsinki on 12th April 2010. The Workshop was organized by TEKES, BONUS EEIG and ESA.

There were very interesting presentations on safety and security in a Maritime environment. It is notable that most solutions developed land based smart and intelligent environments are equally applicable for maritime environments.

In got to attend one of the afternoon parallel workshop sessions and proposed some potential research topics for safety networking on passenger ferries. A passenger ferry tends a home for the passengers for a few days or weeks depending on destination(s). There is plenty do in this area to bring them services and applications they are usually accustomed to whilst on dry land!

We are awaiting for concluding slides from TEKES based on input at this event.

1st ETICA Conference 13.4.2010

UBI-SERV will take part in 1st ETICA Conference, in April 13, 2010, with a paper "Applying Ethical Guidelines to Ubiquitous Health Care in China". Slides available.

Design control in practice

Took part in a seminar, Tuotekehitysprojektin hallittu läpivienti - design control käytännössä at Turku University of Applied Sciences. The seminar covered the practicalities of product development projects in medical technology, e.g., regulatory needs of documentation, verification, validation, IPR, customer needs, and business planning.

Spring 2010 teaching activity

UBI-SERV project is active Spring 2010 teaching at Aalto University School of Science and Technology on the following courses:

• S-72.1010 Ihminen ja tietoliikennetekniikka (approx. translation "Human interaction with telecommunications technology")
• S-72.2510 User-centric design of telecommunications services
  
• T-110.5190 Seminar on internetworking
• S-72.3510 Product development of telecommunications systems
  

MOTIVE Workshop on Ubiquitous Health and Public Safety Services

A joint Academy of Finland MOTIVE program workshop organized by

• UBI-SERV (User-centric Design of Ubiquitous Welfare and Safety Services and Supporting Technologies for China and Finland) and
• THEWS (Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Information Space)

projects, and joined by PSC (Pervasive Service Computing).

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Iiro Jantunen, Timo Korhonen, Pekka Ruotsalainen

DATE

3rd February 2010

VENUE

TUAS Building, Aalto University, School of Science and Technology, Espoo, Finland.

SPEAKERS

• UBI-SERV project
  Timo Korhonen, Aalto University
  
• User-centric design and culture
  Maija Pekkola, Aalto University
  
• Emergency telemedicine in indoor multiple dwelling environments
  Edward Mutafungwa, Aalto University
  
• THEWS - trusted eHealh and eWelfare space
  Pekka Ruotsalainen, THL
• Personal health records - basic concepts and models
  Antto Seppälä, University of Tampere
• Ontologies in eHealth
  Pirkko Nykänen, University of Tampere
• Pervasive service computing
  Jiehan Zhou, University of Oulu
  
• Ubiquitous public safety communications
  Ole Arrhenius, EADS Secure Networks
  
• Health and Well-being Cluster Programme
  Frank Ryhänen, Culminatum
  

SCHEDULE

8:30 Reception, coffee

9:00 Morning session I - presentations

10:30 Coffee break

11:00 Morning session II - presentations continue

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Afternoon session I - group work

14:45 Coffee break

15:15 Afternoon session II - group work continues

16:30 Wrap-up of the workshop

17:00 Workshop ends

REGISTRATION

Preferably contact iiro.jantunen@tkk.fi by 29th January 2010 so that your presence can be taken into account in servings and group work planning.

Insurance companies vs. general-purpose devices used for health care

The New York Times published today an interesting article about insurance companies opposing the use of general-purpose devices, e.g. mobile phones or mainstream PCs for health care applications. The article also covers some other insurance rules that hinder or prevent using modern technology to lower the cost of health care.

Medicare and private health insurers decline to cover cheap devices like iPhones and netbook PCs that can help the speech-impaired, despite their usefulness and lower cost.

Instead, public and private insurers insist that, if Ms. Lynn and others like her want insurance to pay, they must spend 10 to 20 times as much for dedicated, proprietary devices that can do far less.

The problem is that the insurance rules are made for tailor-made single-purpose devices to help the patients. If an general-purpose device would be used, it would be considerably cheaper, but also more difficult to manage. Not all patients are able, e.g., to install new software or update phone software themselves. There is also the question of liability if software or hardware fails in a critical moment. With single-purpose devices, the prices are, however, ridiculously high, a specially made PC with speech-recognition software and support functions costing 8000 USD.

These kind of policies, however, make it very difficult to create affordable home health care services. Many chronic diseases could be monitored with a simple sensor attached to a standard mobile phone containing just some special software. The software could send monitoring data to health care services, or call help if necessary. Of course this is not 100% safe as the battery can run low in a critical moment, but neither would it be 100% safe to be chronically ill at home with no monitoring except for routine visits at a physician.

Doctors must still bring a patient into their offices instead of, say, inspecting an e-mailed photo of a rash if they want most insurers to pay for the consultation.

This is somewhat understandable, as there is little to prevent insurance fraud in such a case. To modernize the health care system to cut costs, the need of the doctor to physically meet the patient should be cut to the really important cases, not for routine prescription of cortisone salve.