Watchers of the telecare industry – not everyone I know – will have read with interest an article this week on the potential for a private pay market for telecare and even telehealth in the UK. Perhaps this is the beginning of a debate which may, in the distant future, lead the widespread availability of such devices in high street consumer electronics shop. If that's the case might we see a future in which advertising like this for Dixons encourages us to browse for our telecare home monitoring device at the Local Authority offices but buy them somewhere else? The tendency for consumers to window shop in one place, and actually shop in another, is not lost on the originators of these two lovely advertisements.

Dixons1_0