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250 HANDBOOK OF ELECTRONIC ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY

• Data protection issues and lack of legislation.
• Ethical issues and fears of declining health services.
• User training and education.

The same report suggests that the support of the governments to fund telecare projects
and investment by private firms would positively influence the development of telecare.
The market for technological interventions is still new and evolving, as is the tech-
nology. As technology develops and becomes more responsive to individual’s needs the
uptake and use are likely to increase. The authors suggest that part of the difficulty with
its use initially is that it was employed before the technology was proven as a response to
financial pressures supporting an ageing population. Consequently, telecare was provided
instead of, rather than with, other social care benefits. This has led to its poor reputation in
the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe. Removing technology from personal
care is always likely to be a very short-sighted approach.

The Internet of Health

The rise of the interconnected society has meant that health and social care has now
become a function that can be undertaken by everyone who has the ability to pair a
smart device with a smartphone or tablet. There are apps for a range of issues ranging
from producing alerts, automatically calling friends and family when a situation arises
or measuring aspects of your health. Free and paid-for apps allow people to take their
medical readings and the internet allows them to determine whether these readings are
good or bad. These range from simple pulse measuring through more complex assess-
ments and artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostics of the likes of Buoy, Babylon Health
11
10
12
and the remote medical consultation of Dr Now. In 2016 when a research project looked
at AI symptom checkers against real doctors they found the symptom checkers were sig-
13
nificantly less accurate. The article reports the limitations of the study; however, it con-
cludes that as AI grows in this area, the accuracy should improve.
The use of mobile apps to support care is also on the increase with apps to record data
such as activities of staff members with residents as well as record vital signs and other
information via a smartphone. Mobile apps allow an individualised interaction with health
and care technology so that apps on a phone or smartwatch can provide alerts or medical
information. Smartphones and smartwatches can also be controllers of a ‘smart home’
which is Bluetooth enabled. These smart homes tend to provide a very limited ability to
modify things and tend to simply turn on or off items and increase or decrease tempera-
tures. As assets ‘mobile phone technology has been turned into a social and encyclopaedia
information/research tool’ (Adibi, 2015, p. 232).

10 https://www.buoyhealth.com/.
11 https://www.babylonhealth.com/.
12 http://www.drnow.com/.
13 https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/doctors-vastly-outperform-symptom-checker-apps/.