HEALTHCARE 4.0 then I think that does make it easier to implement . It ’ s when it ’ s targeted at a generally frail , elderly population that it becomes much more difficult because there is just so many other factors involved , which would have to be in place . “ You ’ ve got to have housing services and home visiting , social care has to be involved , and frail and elderly people have multiple commodities so you ’ re monitoring lots of different medical conditions . It ’ s just a wholly different order of magnitude and complexity when it comes to elderly people .
“ What ’ s different now compared to 10 years ago is the fact that more people have got Fitbits and Apple watches , and there ’ s a whole generation of people becoming used to monitoring aspects of their health .
“ There ’ s a generation of people now who are comfortable with the idea of monitoring their health and the data being looked at by other people , or more sophisticated algorithms that can interpret what ’ s going on from the data .” As the population changes and becomes more accepting of change , then the more likely it is that change will begin to happen in earnest . Barlow is in no doubt that things are improving slowly in terms of global uptake , but he still reckons we are at least a decade away from seeing fully-integrated telehealth systems becoming mainstream around the world .
“ Version two of remote care then I think will be focused on elderly people , and that hasn ’ t happened yet ,” he adds . “ I think it is a sort of 10-20 year horizon to get remote care for elderly people fully-embedded in health and social care systems .
“ It ’ s not the technology or the actual users of telehealth that are the barrier . It ’ s the organisational and funding issues that are the big challenges , and reorganising services for elderly people is a massive problem for health systems around the world – and you need to do that around the technology , so that ’ s the big challenge .”
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