Kemuri: Cisco Grand Challenge Entry

Kemuri wants more people to share this vision:

People living longer, happier and healthier

in their own homes

with non-intrusive social support

from family, friends and carers

Kemuri products and services will help towards achieving it for more families of vulnerable people living alone.  Kemuri has entered a competition, “Cisco Internet of Things Innovation Grand Challenge”. The winner will receive a prize worth US$200,000. Winning would boost the ability to scale quickly to a service for thousands of families with older people living alone. A place in the semi-finals is guaranteed if the entry “Social care costs reduced with IoT sensors and predictive monitoring” is “liked” by the most number of people. To make sure that people are genuinely interested, Cisco require people to register on the Innovation web site.

The publicity for being top of the poll would be useful, even if it does not lead to winning the top prize.  Spreading the link would help to gather a few more votes for a worthwhile social enterprise that could have an impact on every family that is concerned about the wellbeing of vulnerable people living alone.

Downturn in Telecare?

Tunstall, is possibly the largest supplier of telecare services to UK Social Services. The newsletter of “Telehealth and Telecare Aware” tells us of rising debt and “an air of turmoil and uncertainty”.  This is not good news at a time when the proportion of older people is rising.  Companies in financial stress often draw in their horns and cease to innovate.  The opportunities of the Internet of Things and predictive monitoring should not be missed.  New technology can save or destroy businesses – just look at Kodak and Nokia.

There is no reduction in demand for Telecare, we may be observing a supertanker unable to change direction quickly.

MLF supports open standards: Open Care EcoSystem?

Martha Lane Fox understands the case for open standards; from her speech in the lords:

“I am not talking about expensive and costly top down nhs IT projects but instead about better use of data, open standards, more agile development and a more digitally minded culture in our healthcare sector….

 … the Department of Health (DH) believes that at least three million people with long term conditions and/or social care needs could benefit from the use of telehealth and telecare services. Implemented effectively as part of a whole system redesign of care, telehealth and telecare can alleviate pressure on long term NHS costs and improve people’s quality of life through better self-care in the home setting.“

The NHS can potentially save so much money, they should consider giving financial support to organisations working on preventative care.  Here’s Quarkside’s idea.

Elderly people living independently could have their homes fitted with activity sensors and wear health monitors eg blood pressure.  Data is collected continuously, via the Internet, and analysed to create an individual’s unique, normal, behaviour pattern.  Deviation from normal patterns, displayed to family members or carers, alerts them of potential health problems and they can provide valuable data for GPs or hospitals.

Early medical intervention could improve outcomes for people with chronic conditions, eg diabetes, loss of cognition eg Alzheimer’s and recently discharged from hospitals.  Each could be worth £billions.

An ecosystem of open standards makes sense.  We need standards for::

• Home activity sensors, eg smart meters
• Health monitors, eg heart rate
• Safety alarms, eg carbon monoxide levels
• Time series data for all types of home and health monitors
• Display of analytical information for individuals, families, carers and health professionals
• Information governance of digital identities and data sharing

Standards like this, developed coherently in the public sector, would encourage innovative SMEs to enter the market and vastly improve health outcomes.  It could be a world leading industry, helping the UK economy.  This open ecosystem should be supported by multiple stakeholders.  It crosses the boundaries of Government departments of Business, Innovation & Skills, Health, Education, Communities & Local Government, Work & Pensions  and Local Authorities with responsibility for Social Care.

Any Government and Trust funding for the development of an Open Care EcoSystem will help the transformation from a reactive public health service to a preventative health culture in private citizens.

Is ten years too ambitious?

Predictive Monitoring: Heart Attack and Stroke?

Machine learning via neural networks produces impressive results.  The Blood Glucose prediction hackathon used three data streams: historical blood glucose, insulin dosage and carbohydrate consumption.  This explains approximately 50% of the prediction.

Blood Glucose Predictive Power

Adding three more streams would increase this to 85%; other nutrition, activity and other lifestyle factors.  All these could be simply collected from mobile devices and used in other health prediction applications. It shows the value of monitoring data streams for multiple purposes.  This data could also be analysed alongside logs of blood pressure and heart rhythms.

Just think of the value to people who are at risk of heart attack or stroke.   Real-time predictions of heart rate and blood pressure could set alarms that would moderate a person’s behaviour.  An impertinent machine telling you to Stop driving!, sit down! or have a rest! may upset your plans – but it is better than risking your own or another life.

Machine learning is not rule based – it calculates the rules.

#IOT: Passive Path to Protection

There’s a lively growth in the Internet of Things (IOT).  The prices are crashing down and manufacturers can see profit in the huge numbers of sensors that will be deployed.  The costs will be low enough for families to contemplate installation in the homes of elderly relatives.

Most old people prefer to stay at home in familiar surroundings.  But they are still at risk and unobtrusive monitoring is needed give reassurance.  What is a passive monitoring service worth? What might it cost annually?  Compared with spending £40k – £60k on full time care in a residential home, IOT monitoring has both financial and well-being benefits.  Everybody is a winner – plus the Health services, who will need fewer days of frail people in hospital.

IOT is part of the pathway to more years of safer life at home.

The ideas are simple – the implementation is complex and needs partnership.