Maps and apps

One of the biggest challenges (and the best bits) of working in assistive technology research is the speed at which technological change occurs. Thinking back to 1995, the British Medical Journal published an article entitled Telemedicine: lessons remain unheeded  in which the authors concluded that  "The telephone is an effective and stable technology that is already in place in most health care systems—but its full potential has yet to be exploited." In the past seventeeen years, mobile phone technology has moved on so much - but it could be argued that this is still true, and the full potential of m-health has yet to be realised.

The Department of Health have been trying to capture some of the latest ideas for helping to support long-term condition self-management via their Maps and Apps initiative. From obesity to mental health, there are lots of innovative ideas about the way that mobile phones can be used. There's a definite need for more research, and the Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology research group is right at the forefront, with projects including SMART 2 helping to combine touchscreen and mobile technologies to manage health conditions like stroke, chronic pain and heart failure.


Ref: McLaren P , Ball C J BMJ 1995;310:1390-1391

PLINY in the THE

Gail Mountain

It's always nice to share achievements and so here's  a mention of one of Professor Gail Mountain's many research grants in the Times Higher Education. PLINY, or Putting Life in Years, focuses on mental well-being for older adults.

This innovative project is funded by the National Institute for Health Research and will assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of telephone befriending.

TomorrowTogether

TomorrowTogether is a new initiative from the Technology Strategy Board who also fund several RAT group projects. The aim of the project is to share ideas about innovative practice in helping to make older people's lives better. Consulting a wide variety of people across the population about their thoughts on  improving practice, services and technology is a great idea, as the ageing population is something that affects us all.

The Discover section has some great links to resources you might be interested in if you're working in research with older adults. User-centred design is also key to quite a number of the projects currently being undertaken in the RAT group, which we'll be posting on over the coming months...

Teaching Differently: New Programmes, New Delivery

Every year, the University of Sheffield devotes a day to its Learning and Teaching (LeTs) Conference. It's a chance to see what innovative practice is happening throughout the University, and to think about what new things can be done to improve our own teaching practice. While the RAT group focuses on research, we're also interested in teaching future healthcare practitioners about telehealth and changing healthcare practice, as we've talked about before. In the future, we're looking at running a distance learning module on telehealth and telecare, perhaps collaborating with our colleagues at the University of Western Ontario.

At the LeTs conference, after some thoughts from colleagues local and international, I attended some sessions on using technology in distance learning, and group work. Danny Monaghan and Chris Stokes spoke informatively on the way that for current university students, technology is normal, and students are quite happy to make a podcast on their phone and upload it our Virtual Learning Environment (MOLE2). Bringing creativity to our teaching brings creativity to the outputs that our students produce, and it allows students to take part in peer assessment and reflective practice as well as gaining knowledge and skills.

In another very relevant session, Peter Bath and Claire Beecroft talked about their integration of online learning into a distance learning Postgraduate programme using the Wimba software to run interactive, international online lectures. All in all, I took away some excellent ideas that I hope to share with my colleagues in the RAT research group so we can all work to teach in an interesting, innovative and informative manner.

[written by Liz Brewster]