Will the National Broadband Network mean the next phase for digital homes in Australia?

The United States is facing a major challenge, as an aging population threatens to strain our nation's healthcare system to the breaking point. Already we're feeling the strain, as Congress struggles to provide prescription drug benefits for today's 34 million seniors.

Future Home's mission is serving people with disabilities, their families, and professionals interested in some of today's technological solutions to living with severe disabilities. Demonstrating technology, sharing architectural solutions, and building bridges between the medical and building professionals are just a few of the instruments used to change the way people think individuals with disabilities and our aging population should live.

Each year, home electrical problems account for an estimated 53,600 fires. These fires cause more than 500 deaths, injure 1,400 people, and account for $1.4 billion in property damage. Many of these fires occur in aging homes. According to a study conducted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the frequency of electrically related fires is disproportionately high in homes more than 40 years old.

Care can be extended to mobile patients and to the patient's homes by using telemonitoring and teleconferencing facilities.

Through the recently issued Briefing Paper "Sustainable Telemedicine: paradigms for future-proof healthcare" EHTEL provides a snapshot of the state of the art of European, national and regional level progress towards sustainable telemedicine services.

At 85, Matilda is frail and forgetful. Like a growing number of Floridians, she has reached the stage when living on her own is becoming difficult. But she will avoid an assisted living facility or nursing home for now.

What if we started from what we do know -- the things we actually need and want, our whims and desires -- then asked inventors, designers and corporations to come up with the goods?

Improving awareness of e-health and telemedicine technologies in EU pre-Accession countries has forged links between the EU's Newly Associated States (NAS) and 'older' members that remain strong today. The process involved linking leading health telematics centres in the EC and NAS in an active network of cooperation and knowledge sharing. A Centre of Competence, established at Cracow Telemedicine Centre of Excellence in Poland, coordinated publishing activities, events, training and intake of solutions from cooperating partners within the EU and NAS.

Because no study has been done so far that fully assesses all the aspects that concur to achieve the quality of telemedicine applications, the authors propose a set of tools and procedures for Telemedicine Quality Control.

It is widely held that information technologies will revolutionize patient care, medical research, medical education and the administration of health services. ..this article analyzes many of the vast array of activities that take place under the telemedicine banner