No abstract

The article describes an innovative, person-centred service provided to families who had a child or teenager with severe learning (intellectual) disabilities. It was delivered in three areas within Northern Ireland: two urban and one rural. The service promoted the social inclusion of young people in volunteer-run community activities, based around a person-centred plan developed with the child's family. A three-year formative evaluation of the service was undertaken (2006-2008) via interviews and focus groups with parents (N = 48), young people (N = 19), volunteers (N = 7), community workers (N = 4) and referring social services staff (N = 14). The service was successfully implemented in all three areas. In particular, it helped parents to clarify their individual support needs and engaged their child in ordinary community activities. The distinctive features of the service and the changed ethos it represents are discussed.

We have developed a speech-based telemedicine system which enables patients with hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus to send frequent, home-monitored health data via the telephone to the point of care. The decision support module in the system was tested using data from a cohort of 10 patients generated over a two-year period. Results from the tests indicate that the system is effective in providing personalized feedback to the patient and in generating alerts for the clinical user. The work suggests that this method of care delivery is practical, informative, and may improve the efficiency of chronic health-care delivery by reducing costs and improving patient-physician communication between hospital visits.

The Official Journal of the British Institute of Learning Disabilities follow-up evaluation to assess the long-term impact of this training in practice is needed, however it is hoped that more projects of this nature will be adopted in the future.

A spoken dialogue system for the acquisition of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) home monitored patient data known as DI@L-log is presented. The purpose of the system is to collect weight, blood sugar and blood pressure readings from a cohort of hypertensive T2DM patients on a weekly basis using their home telephone. The recent voice-data convergence affords an arguably improved means for doctors to track patient health states at a distance in order to provide health institutions with more frequent and accurate patient profiles. Our system architecture integrates VoiceXML and the standard PSTN, with a Pan-European open source for hosting Internet telephony applications. This paper reports on recent developments in the design of DI@L-log, which aims to serve as a communication intervention that disparages the traditional paper logbook used to document readings by the patient.