Satellite operator Hughes Network Systems has won a four-year contract from the New England Telehealth Consortium (NETC) to provide satellite services for mobile telehealth clinics in rural parts of Northern New England.

A federally funded consortium of healthcare providers, NETC (Bangor, USA) has been working to develop a private telecoms network that gives healthcare providers fast access to research, medical records and remote medical diagnostics.

After growing at a relatively modest rate over the last couple of years, worldwide device and service revenues from telehealth are expected to rise 55% in 2013, boosted by the rising adoption of telehealth in post-acute care strategies, according to new research from InMedica, a part of IMS Research.

Due to poor economic conditions in Europe, and uncertainty about healthcare reforms in the US, telehealth device revenues grew by only 5% between 2010 and 2011 – with the number of telehealth patients enrolled worldwide rising 22.2% to 241,200 – and by 18% between 2011 and 2012.

The automotive industry will continue to fuel M2M growth in Europe next year, while in the US the health sector will be the main M2M spur.

These are the predictions of German telecoms incumbent Deutsche Telekom (Bonn, Germany), which has put M2M at the heart of its growth strategy.

According to Jurgen Hase, the vice president of Deutsche Telekom’s M2M Competence Center, a mixture of competition and regulation will aid M2M players targeting the European automotive industry.

Telekom Austria is reaching out to enterprise customers in central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with a new initiative aimed at spurring the adoption of M2M services.

Called ‘Unlock M2M’, the program is intended to facilitate the take-up of M2M technology by making it more accessible and affordable.

In Barcelona's Hospital Del Mar, Telefonica is doing more than connecting phone lines - it is also developing a lucrative new business keeping patients' hearts in good shape.

A heart-monitoring program put in place by Telefonica (Madrid, Spain) is just one kind of machine-to-machine (M2M) technology that telecom operators are racing to develop for sectors including healthcare, automotive, transportation and energy.

Shirley Silvers thinks the "virtual doctor" who monitors her chronic lung condition via mobile phone is wonderful.

"It is like having my doctor sitting on my sofa," said the 64-year-old from Stoke-on-Trent in central England, explaining how her temperature, oxygen levels and sputum color - a barometer for infection - are now checked daily from home.

She sends her readings by text message and gets a reply within minutes, removing the need for regular trips to the doctor.

British health minister Jeremy Hunt is equally enthusiastic.

Canadian m-health specialist Ideal Life is collaborating with Orange Business Services on the rollout of its remote monitoring services in Europe and Latin America.

By providing remote care to homes, the services are intended to prevent non-critical readmissions of patients to hospitals.

Ideal Life (Toronto, Canada) is to begin offering new medical hubs, equipped with Orange (Paris, France) SIM cards, that are stored in the home and collect data from a variety of health-related devices, including blood pressure monitors and glucose, oxygen saturation and heart rate meters.

Productivity gains resulting from the “internet of things” could add between $10 trillion and $15 trillion to global GDP over the next 20 years, according to a new study from General Electric (GE).

The manufacturing giant reckons the “industrial internet”, as it terms the phenomenon, could find direct application in sectors accounting for more than $32.3 trillion in global economic activity, but expects this figure to reach about $82 trillion – one half of global economic output – by 2025.

Telerad Tech (Bangalore, India), a healthcare IT specialist, has announced that its Cisco-based telemedicine services are now available in parts of eastern India.

The organization is using Cisco’s HealthPresence telemedicine platform to provide medical services to a number of villages, and it says more than 100 patients have already benefited from the technology.

Using the Cisco (San Jose, USA) system, Telerad doctors have been offering telemedicine consultations in the villages of Chattisgarh and Odisha, while another site in Rajasthan is scheduled to go live this month.

Europe’s premier vendor organization for machine-to-machine communications (M2M) and the world’s largest M2M event organizer have announced that their joint marketing agreement will expand into full-blown partnership. The M2M Alliance has been working with the M2M Zone in joint promotional activities since 2010, but now their cooperation will include the exchange of content, membership services, and strategic consultation for the first time, in addition to joint exhibition and conference activities.