Expert Views

Wireless Healthcare and Independent Living

David Cudby describes himself as a ‘leading edge baby boomer’. It is his firm belief that as the average age of the population and life expectancy edge up, what most people, not least the ‘baby boomers’, want, is the opportunity to use wireless healthcare technology to enable them to take more responsibility for their own health.

“I would like wireless healthcare technology to help me to be allowed to ‘age in place’; to live in my own home and familiar surroundings for as long as I can,” he explains.

Cudby sees wireless healthcare technology as playing a number of key roles in this scenario. Wearable and home-based devices could monitor and produce data on an individual’s health condition. This data could then be passed to the individual’s family and friends in their roles as carers, or analysed and passed to a remote carer service.

“For example, wireless healthcare devices could pass information to the GP or consultant to aid disease management and diagnosis,” he adds. “It could also enable health coaching as part of chronic disease or disability management.”

Developing the market

Cudby’s optimistic view of the future of wireless healthcare hinges on one central belief. “I hope that the development of a market in wireless healthcare devices and services, in parallel with the equally important raising of design standards of housing, can be achieved if sufficient effort is put into raising awareness.”

Currently, says Cudby, the public has little or no awareness of either of these two dimensions of independent living and self-managed healthcare. “Knowledge is largely confined to researchers, policy makers, futurologists and the medical devices and wireless technology communities.”

Raising awareness

To raise awareness which will lead to the creation of a market for wireless healthcare which is as vibrant as the mobile communications market, Cudby believes a number of actions are necessary.

“For example, we need a serious yet popular TV programme and a periodical which bring together information, news and views dealing with lifestyle and health choices; independent living; wireless devices for managing chronic conditions and disabilities; and excellence in home design which avoids driving people into institutions.”

He would also like to see an annual Europe-wide design competition for architects, focusing on excellence in the design of houses for independent living: “No amount of wireless technology will keep us out of institutions if our homes deny us the most basic facilities for mobility, safe lifting and bathing.”

At the same time, he would like to see retailers in health, IT and do-it-yourself taking a greater interest in promoting and marketing wireless healthcare devices to be connected wirelessly to a home computer and then to broadband.

Providing incentives

Another action would be for health insurers to give incentives to those who use wireless healthcare devices as consumer products in a preventative or disease management role.

Finally, tax incentives should be made available for people to invest in wireless healthcare enabled homes analogous to the tax incentives for carbon neutral houses.

“Wireless healthcare has a great future ahead of it,” summarises Cudby. “Now is the time to put processes in place so that its many benefits start to be realised.”