What You Need To Know About TeleHealthcare

Are you using Teladoc, MDLive, or Project ECHO? Have you downloaded monitoring health apps on your smartphone? Telemedicine, the remote delivery of healthcare and clinical diagnostics via internet, satellite, wireless, or telephone technology, is rapidly expanding in the U.S. and is central to Federal plans for managing aging America's care. If you haven't encountered it yet...you will. "Over the last 5 or 10 years what we've seen is an explosion of telehealthcare...in the management of chronic disease, in the management of mental health...we're seeing telehealth being used to provide daily ongoing care for patients...." states Ashish Jha, the Director of Harvard's Global Health Institute, in the video below. While insurers, practitioners, healthcare services, and government planners are well informed on the capabilities and goals of telemedicine the average elder needs to build awareness. Will I still see my doctor? Do I need special equipment? Why is healthcare changing? How will telemedicine change the way I plan for late life care?

Embracing The Challenge of our Bodies' Changing Nutrition Needs

Food is our source of energy and wellness. As we age, our bodies' dietary needs change. Sometimes conditions, intolerances, or food allergies cause us to adjust a diet we've enjoyed for years. Other times we just need more nutrients or vitamins to maintain adequate energy to get through a day. As we continue to work and stay active into the later years of our lives it's important to embrace the challenge of our changing dietary needs because the foods we eat create our foundation of health and vitality.

Are We Alone?

Are we alone? Certainly, here on earth, we're not. We're aging among a cohort that numbers the largest this nation has seen and we're plugged into one another in multiple ways through computers, cell phones, and public cameras. Yet, you might wonder, are we really in touch or quietly alone with our devices? In fact, we're living alone in record numbers that increase dramatically as we age. Are we alone in the universe? NASA may soon let us know. Just as we once thought the earth was flat, we might discover that we're not alone here on earth... or are we?

2015: Year in Review

2015 came to a restless close with fear dominating news-- would terrorists spoil the joy and promise of a new year? Thankfully the answer was no but it's a fitting end because in a sense fear defined 2015. We feared terrorism, corruption, digital vulnerability of all sorts, violence, and personal financial collapse. We feared social changes and coped nervously with ongoing weather extremes. Yet, our year of high anxiety also ushered in a quiet new dawn of breakthroughs in medicine, sciences and space. Profoundly, 2015 signaled the beginning of a revolution in the way we cure. It heralded transformations in our manufacturing industries. It lent certainty to a future with devices that know how we feel and robotic competitors/companions that will challenge our definition of self. Fasten your seatbelts, readers, get ready for an exciting ride...here comes 2016!