Telehealth and other stories . . .

Telehealth can substantially reduce mortality, reduce the need for hospital admission, and reduce the number of bed days spent in hospital and time spent in the emergency department, said the Department of Health about the results of the Whole System Demonstrator in 2011. But a new analysis in Age and Ageing (2014, doi:10.1093/ageing/afu067) shows that the project cost £297 000 per quality adjusted life year gained, 10 times the usual criterion for cost effectiveness, and the same as in the control group. The Department of Health is strangely quiet.

Diabetes and epilepsy are generally regarded as risk factors for injury in the workplace, but a new population case-control study in Occupational Medicine (2014, doi:10.1093/occmed/kqu079) finds no evidence for this. Using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, the authors identified 1348 injury cases and 6652 matched controls and found no case of injury due to a seizure. For people with diabetes, there was no link between eye complications or …