23 June 2011

A typhoon and plastic bag have been major factors influencing my last few days. I think this is the first time I have attended a conference where the sessions were subject to postponement in the event of a typhoon striking - and then one was actually forecast. More about the typhoon and plastic bag later.

I have been in Hong Kong following an invitation to deliver the key note speech at the 1st Asia Pacific eCare and Telecare Congress. Over 200 delegates attended from over 15 countries. The coordinator of the congress is the Senior Citizen Home Safety Association - the largest monitoring centre in Hong Kong, with over 75,000 service users.

Disappointing that there were only two TSA members represented, despite advance details having been circulated. It was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate UK equipment that is far more advanced than anything being shown. In addition, Silver Chain from Australia gave a very good presentation on a telehealth trial using a UK supplier's equipment.

I was able to present to the congress details about the TSA, our work on developing standards for the telecare market, and the support / direction being given to telecare and telehealth by the UK Government. From the delegates there was considerable interest in the TSA and the engagement / support we gained from Government. We may sometimes under estimate the importance of the support we gain from the UK Government on the development of telecare and telehealth, but speaking to other delegates it is clear that we have been able to engage with Government and receive funding support much more than other countries.

However, the biggest interest was shown in the TSA Code - with no other country having an industry standard for service delivery. For instance Hong Kong has looked at an ISO 9001 code, but wanted something specific to telecare rather than a general standard. So they are very interested in adopting the TSA Code for their service. However, they are not without their own set of standards - and some very testing ones! For instance, the Hong Kong monitoring centre has a call handling KPI - but this is to answer calls within 10 seconds. It is currently achieving this target for 96% of all calls - and that is on an average of over 2,500 calls each day.

I am following up discussions with a number of delegates at the conference about overseas membership of the TSA, as well as possible accreditation to the TSA Code. These are strong indicators of the wide reach and influence that TSA can have on the global telecare market. Finally I was able to promote our own conference in November.

So back to the typhoon and the plastic bag! On the day of departure back to the UK the typhoon started to zero in on Hong Kong. The warning level rose to one below that at which the airport is closed. Despite that the wind and rain became very intense. And then to cap it all as the aircraft was taxiing to take off it managed to get a plastic bag blown into the No2 engine, so we had to abort take off and return for presumably an engineer to shove his hand in the engine and pull it out.

My next event is the South West Regional forum - where I expect the lunchtime sandwiches not to include ducks feet or jellyfish, both of which were served at the Hong Kong conference dinners.

Regards

Trevor Single