Telehealth via the Caregivers
We would like to team up with your group. Together we will market web service in our local Gold Country five county community, then take it to 40,000 rural communities. The technology was developed by a 10 year old Company, very successful in France and Canada with tele-health. They do not need any money up front, just share our revenues.
Best support for telehealth and clinical trials: 50 million informal caregivers (also alternative medicine and assistive technology distribution)
by Janine M LodatoLodatoClan at aol.comMyproviderspace.com
The future of the US economy will, to a large degree, depend on a good solution for the largest problem: the runaway cost of healthcare. Telemedicine, telehealth would be great help to solve this problem. The family and informal caregiver can become the one who takes and reports the vital signs of the care recipient, thus lowering the cost of medicine.
The caregiver can also help the care recipient to participate in clinical trials and do the necessary reporting. The monitoring the general condition and vitals of the care recipient even when the caregiver is not on location can be accomplished via the Web by the ConnectR product of irobot.com or similar video capable Web terminal products allowing tele-conferencing so the care recipient would not feel alone.
In a recent statement by the family caregiver organization says it well: There are more than 50 million family caregivers in the USA and they provide 80 percent of the long term care services to the 100 million homebound people in need of care. These uncompensated services provided by the caregivers amount to more than 400 billion dollars annually.
The caregivers could also represent alternative medicine and assistive technology oriented small businesses.
The combination of the informal caregivers and their care recipients amount to half of the population of the USA. And it is the same in the other 9 industrialized countries of the G-10 group of nations.
This very large group of caregivers and care recipients need local community support in the form of a Web Server, located in each community, providing Web 2.0 based collaborative services and applications. People would trust this service if it was offered by the local bank, or by the local government, or by the regional hospital, or even by the regional educational support system .
This secure Web Server could also allow the caregivers to perform their regular jobs telework style from the home of the care recipient.
About the author
I had gained deep insight into the requirements of the people in need of caregiving and their caregivers when I worked for John Garamendi, now Lieutenant Governor of California, then State Senator
I have many years of personal experience using AT (assistive technology) and found it very helpful in SPMS (secondary progressive multiple sclerosis) conditions as described below in a brief review of my personal experiences.
In addition to my extensive experience with AT, I also have related graduate credentials from both California State Univ at Northridge (the center for AT corporate interactions) as well as CSU in Sacramento and UOP, Universaty of the Pacific in Stockton.
To compensate for a total loss of motor skills due to Multiple Sclerosis (MS), I have focused on the development and performance of mental tasks. I write articles. I create books, I play Scrabble all with the help of my caregiver hero husband Laszlo. We watch DVD movies and documentaries from Netflix, a great service indeed, and listen to magazines and books on tape provided by the Library of Congress, another worthwhile service to people with disability, delivered at no charge then we discuss the content of these.
I am absolutely sure I am avoiding the onset of cognitive problems, dementia and Alzheimer's. I firmly believe that using my brain in activities requiring the mind will continue to keep me productive in spite of my severe physical disability. My husband even jokes that I am causing him to develop Alzheimer’s because I remember all the phone numbers, all the names, all the activities in which we have participated, so he gives himself permission to forget such information.
My husband reminds me frequently that "no one is disabled when on the Internet, when one interacts via the Web". So I use him as my VoxBot (voice robot) and KeyBot (a keyboard robot) when I want something quick via the Web.
I am the luckiest person on the face of the earth, as Lou Gehrig so appropriately announced in his farewell speech, that I am surrounded by the support of my hero husband, my family and my friends and they all appreciate my mind and ignore my physical disability.
Janine M. LodatoP.O.Box 838SAN ANDREAS, CA.95249-0838~__( o )\_
Appendix This very large group need political representation as well as non-profit support. They would be a loyal supporter of the Presidential candidate who represents them. They do need help as described below but it would be a simple set of legislation.
We must enable the caregivers to do tele-work from the homes of the people in need of care. These are the so called informal caregivers, family and friends, who work without pay and provide unbelievably valuable service. There are 50 million of them in the USA Then we could give tax credits to the businesses who allow their employees to perform tele-work style.
There could also be major political support for this project by means of allowing businesses to receive carbon credits for each day they allow each of their employees to perform tele-work style. Of course then the business could sell these carbon credits which is becoming a very large market.
In addition to allowing the caregivers to earn a living tele-work mode using a community wide WiMax broadband system, the caregivers could also participate in tele-training to improve their abilities.
Then they can become field representatives for the assistive technology industry, for alternative energy industry, for independent living home improvement industry and tele-work part time to very efficiently serve these industries and allowing the companies of these industry segments to penetrate markets which would not be available to them otherwise.
The employers of these caregivers would install an open source strong tele-work oriented tele-presence system on their web server. A team-work oriented collaborative system like the one offered by ubuntu.com, open source, called Croquet.
Recently in a Fortune article Dr. Andy Grove made some very important and eloquent statement re the healthcare cost in the USA especially of the cost of care for the people who are in need of home based care: the frail elderly, the chronically ill and the disabled. About a 100 million in the USA alone.
Medical spending in the USA is at 16% of the GDP and it is the fastest growing segment. The average American spends 440,000 dollars in his/her lifetime on healthcare. 280,000 of which will be spent after age 65 and approximately 50% of this will be spent on assisted-living facilities and nursing homes. So it stands to reason that if there were a way to keep the people in need of care in there own homes longer we would have a better and lower cost system: we could save $ 300 billion per year.
This community wide broadband Web connection serving the caregivers can also help the care recipients, the people in need of care. For this user group a simple voice recognition capable Internet server is needed and can be supplied by any server farm, of Web 2.0 style, the social Web such as Google Lively, MySpace, Facebook, Wikia, even Amazon etc. The care recipient end user is connected to the Web through a simple laptop in each of the homes of the care recipients. This allows the care recipients to participate in virtual group sessions, visit people virtually and in general get involved. This virtual group participation's can also be achieved with the Croquet system.
posted by Janine M Lodato @ 3:35 PM
0 Comments
