Telehealth for our Ageing Society

The population of the world is ageing, and the prospect of increasing care costs is generating new ideas and approaches to healthcare for the elderly. This growing burden of care, coupled with the rapid increase of digital literacy and an appetite for the use of digital resources among older citizens, has also encouraged a diversification of remote healthcare options, and has prompted the care sector to diversify its offer and investigate strategic alignments in research and development. This book presents a selection of papers from the 5th Global Telehealth conference, held in Adelaide, Australia, in November 2017. In recognition of the diversity of this area of healthcare, this series of international meetings, which began in 2010, has focused on different topics in telehealth. The main aim of the 2017 meeting was to share knowledge of complementary research endeavors in telehealth as related to later-life care, and to foster interaction between the different groups undertaking research in this emerging topic area. The 11 papers included here cover a diverse variety of topics, including: telehealth in the elderly with chronic heart failure; wearable information technology and self-management; telerehabilitation exercise in residential care; the Smarter Safer Homes platform; and prediction of freezing of gait in patients with Parkinson’s disease. The book will be of interest to all whose work involves the development or delivery of healthcare for older patients.