7 March 2012

The Wales forum today was yet another well attended event! Both the North West forum last month and Wales today have set new records for attendance. Some good speakers, including Richard Foggie now with HoIP, but previously a strong supporter of TSA while at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), Lee Davis from the Welsh Government, and Shayne Hembrow from Wales and West Housing Association. It was particularly good to get Shayne's take on their DALLAS journey and the focus of their proposal.

I am now off to the Kings Fund congress on Telehealth in London where I am chairing a couple of lunchtime sessions on interoperability. This is an issue that continues to be raised as a barrier to the wider adoption of telecare and Telehealth, even though TSA has done some major work here with industry in developing BS8521 to enable different manufacturers equipment to 'talk' to each other and has been implemented by many of our members. The 3millionlives initiative has similarly highlighted the importance of industry tackling this issue so let's see what comes of the two lunchtime debates.

There are suggestions that Prof Stan Newman will also reveal at Congress some more information on the findings of the Whole System Demonstrator project, particularly around the Telehealth data, so if this happens we will inform our members.

Best regards

Trevor Single