Philips tests Big Brother health checks

The scope of a new global healthcare market worth billions of pounds is being tested in the UK by Philips, the electronics group, with the world's biggest trial of distance monitoring of chronically ill patients in their homes, reports Times Online.

The Dutch company is hoping to prove to the NHS that it can stem the mounting financial burden of institutional care by using hi-tech diagnostic equipment linked by the Internet.

Patients in Newham, a deprived East London borough, are being monitored at home using diagnostic equipment linked via broadband Internet connections to local hospitals and clinics.

The UK Conservative Party has unveiled its draft manifesto for the NHS, promising to decentralise power and usher in a "new era of transparency", states Computing.co.uk.

Rather than continuing with Labour's centralisation agenda, the Tories will allow NHS patients to control their own data and choose the providers with which they share their health records.

Healthcare providers will become autonomous foundation trusts under the Tory proposals. Their performance results will be publically available online, as will data about the performance of their doctors and GPs. The Conservative Party says this will force providers to compete for patients rather than be motivated by meeting targets.

Intel and General Electric will begin marketing Intel's Health Guide patient monitoring and management system in the UK, says BusinessWeek.

The system helps monitor the health of patients with chronic illnesses by tracking their health, providing information about disease and allowing two-way videoconferences. GE Healthcare markets the Health Guide in the US.

The guide can help patients and healthcare professionals manage ailments like diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic lung disease, and heart failure, the companies said.