- Profiles of Tunstall, AMDTelehealth, Docobo, Caregiver Technology and AT&T .
- Also mentioned:- Yahoo, Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault.
- The impact of a growing number of elderly people with IT skills.
- Changing attitudes to 'ageing in place.'
- When the elderly, rather than their children, purchase telehealth services.
- The elderly and blood glucose monitoring case study.
- Using Health 2.0 as a platform for telecare for the elderly.
- Health 2.0 filling the gap in the electronic patient record system market.
- Vendors are adapting to changes in the telecare market.

The next generation of elderly people will have a better working knowledge of IT and different expectations regarding healthcare than their predecessors. This will increase the take up of telecare services and see Health 2.0-based services being used by the elderly.

We will see the disappearance over the next decade of a number of inhibitors that are currently holding back the market for remote care. A case study in this report highlights the problems that elderly diabetes sufferers experience when attempting use home telecare devices. It was found that elderly people with limited experience of high technology struggle with the calibration and use of blood glucose monitors. However the next generation of users will be familiar with mobile phones, PDAs and a wide range of high technology devices.

An increase in the number of people familiar with online services will make it easier for telecare service providers to roll out monitoring services that will transmit data to a GP's surgery and automatically add it to electronic patient records. While incumbent healthcare providers are being slow to deploy electronic patient records and make them accessible to patients, this does provide an opportunity for Health 2.0 vendors who can use advanced and open healthcare services as a platform for a range of telecare services.

The generation who drove social change in the 1960s will enter retirement with a new attitude to old age and healthcare. Anyone designing an online system to help their parents ‘age in place' should ask themselves ‘Is this how I see myself spending my old age?'”

Who should purchase this report:-

- Medical device vendors.
- Wireless technology vendors.
- eHealth and healthcare providers.
- Decision makers in the public healthcare sector.
- Investors in the healthcare IT sector.
- Mobile operators.
- Other organisations active in telecare provision.

Over the next two decades an increasing number of people will reach the age at which they need the type of support that can be provided using a telecare service. Most telecare vendors and providers market their products and services within a framework based on the ‘ageing in place' concept. ‘Ageing in place' assumes that if a person is given the required support they can remain in their own home rather than being cared for in sheltered accommodation or a nursing home. This concept appeals both to elderly people, as they can lead relatively independent lives in familiar surroundings, and also to healthcare providers because care costs less to provide at the edge of the healthcare network.

Each year will see more people who have used computers and the Internet during their working lives using their IT skills to improve the quality of their lives during old age. Already some people who have been exposed to Internet-based social networking have reached retirement age, and as more do so the market for telecare for the aged will become more complex for the vendors and service providers who have to address an increasing mix of user skills and requirements.

Some vendors are beginning to experiment with a new generation of telecare services that use Health 2.0-type technology as a platform. These vendors may soon be able to launch next generation telecare services in a section of the healthcare market where incumbent healthcare providers have little influence over the type of service the consumer has access to. If this trend continues, elderly telecare users will make up an important part of the market for services such as Google Health and Microsoft's Health Vault, especially if access and privacy issues slow the adoption of the electronic patient record systems deployed by incumbent healthcare providers.

This report examines the changing market for telecare for the aged, and analyses the potential impact of Health 2.0 on this sector of the healthcare market. The report also looks at the way vendors are building a range of remote monitoring and communications technology into both existing and next generation telecare and support services for the elderly.