Last year we wrote about Nintendo’s new Wii game software that was all the rage at retirement communities. Residents had formed bowling leagues, held tennis tournaments and even boxing matches.

Now Nintendo is helping everyone get a bit more fit. As noted in today’s NYTimes, Wii Fit debuted in Britain last month and was the fastest selling game ever in that country. And it is expected to so as well when it is rolled out in North America next week.

Wii Fit uses the same console and TV as the game Wii, plus a sensitive “balance board” placed on the floor to present a few dozen activities, from push-ups to yoga, to more entertaining challenges like balance games and aerobic contests.

Go Wii.

Established in Ireland a few years ago, the TRIL Centre is a coordinated collection of research projects addressing the physical, cognitive and social consequences of ageing, all informed by ethnographic research and supported by a shared pool of knowledge and engineering resources.

The TRIL Centre’s mission is to discover and deliver technology solutions which support independent ageing, ideally in a home environment. This will improve the quality of life of older citizens while reducing the burden on carers and on the health care system. The Project is a collaborative effort combining Intel personnel and researchers from Irish universities and hospitals in multi-disciplinary teams.

IAHSA members learned about TRIL from Eric Dishman in Malta in 2007. Stay tuned for an update in London July 2009.

Numerous studies have been published about global ageing – the most important demographic event of the 21^st Century. We’ve covered a number of studies on its impact on the workforce, migration, retirement systems, and health care, especially long term care.

Now we have a report from The Center for Strategic International Studies [CSIS] that focuses on its impact on national and global security.

The report, The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21^st Century, explores how population ageing and decline will constrain the developed countries to maintain security over the next few decades. It also examines the security implications of emerging demographic trends in different regions of the developing world. While some political scientists and security experts argue that the forces of demography are pushing the world toward greater peace and stability, the CSIS report concludes that they pose growing security threats—and that the period of greatest danger lies just over the horizon in the 2020s.

For international groups like IAHSA this is an important study, increasing our awareness of the differences and similarities between our member countries.

Tomorrow is Pangea Day, a day devoted to bringing the world together through film.

At 18.00 GMT, locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program will be broadcast – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones.

The 24 short films to be featured have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from over one hundred countries. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person’s eyes.

Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim is the inspiration behind Pangea Day – her vision is to find a way to change the world. Jehane, IAHSA supports your efforts.

Seven years ago, Dr. Robyn Stone co-authored a white paper entitled Who Will Care for Us? Addressing the Long-Term Care Workforce Crisis in America.

This excellent paper challenged policymakers to take action on ways in which the USA can prepare for the coming baby boomer generation and the demands that they will make on the health care system in general, and the long-term care system specifically.

Now seven years later, the Institute of Medicine’s recent report, Retooling for An Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, echoes and expands on the issue, calling for bold initiatives designed to meet the growing needs of an expanding elderly population. Dr. Stone testified on the study before the US Congress saying, “The growing demand for long-term care, resulting from aging baby boomers and a much smaller pool of traditional caregivers, means the future will be immeasurably worse without decisive action by both public and private sectors.”

No one except our ageing service provider members seemed to be listening in 2001. Perhaps others will in 2008.

In a medical culture that encourages aggressive treatment at acute care hospitals to save all patients at all costs, including the elderly, the concept of ’slow medicine’ poses ethical and behavioral challenges.

Grounded in research at Dartmouth Medical School, ’slow medicine’ encourages physicians to put on the breaks when considering care that may have high risks and limited rewards for the elderly. It also educates patients and families how to make decisions about which treatments to have, or not.

As reported in a recent New York Times article, Kendal at Hanover, an IAHSA community in the USA, addresses the issue of end of life care up front with their residents so there is a good understanding of the options before an emergency arises.

Sharing information, techniques, and inspiration is vital to the improvement of professional services. That is the philosophy behind the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s online repository for health-care innovations.

Examples of innovations described on the new exchange:

* Administrators for the Iowa Department of Public Health used tools and resources developed by the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment to overhaul the department’s substance-abuse services.

* An intensive-care unit team shares its communications protocol for connecting staff, patients, and family members in setting daily goals for patients’ care and treatment. The regular communication helps ensure progress toward meeting treatment goals.

* A nursing-home care model, known as the “Wellspring Model,” is described, showing how nursing homes can come together in a learning collaborative to exchange staff performance data and conduct group training to enhance resident care.

An excellent resource for health-care providers, the site allows registered viewers to read articles and expert commentaries, sign up for the e-mail newsletter, browse the Innovations Exchange by subject, and participate in topic-specific discussions.

The Institute for the Future of Aging Services recently published a new report based on analysis of the 2004 National Nursing Home Survey [USA]. The report shows that 1 in 4 nursing home residents aged 65 and older has diabetes. The report also examined the association between diabetes and ethnicity, activities of daily living, source of admission, payment sources, length of stay, pressure ulcers, emergency department visits and medication usage.

Not only does this brief demonstrate the extremely high prevalence of diabetes in U.S. nursing homes, but it raises important issues related to planning for the special needs of this large segment of the nursing home population.

And even though it is based on US data, the lessons learned can be applied in many countries around the world.

According to new data published in the Human Resources for Health journal, the international migration of doctors and nurses has contributed to the critical shortage and inequitable distribution of health workers in many developing countries, resulting in a situation where people living in the most deprived areas do not have access to health services.

Some countries have introduced voluntary Codes of Practice (COP) for the ethical recruitment of international health workers. These intend to restrict aggressive recruitment from countries experiencing shortages of their own and also to protect the rights of migrant workers and support them in their job.

IAHSA views this issue as a top priority in our long term care workforce strategy. We will continue to follow this issue very closely as it has a tremendous impact on the availability of workforce for ageing service providers.