Telecare is looking after someone at a distance, using technology, so that they can keep living in their own home instead of moving into a hospital or a care home. It is aimed mostly at old people and at people who are ill or disabled. In practice it means equipment in the house that quietly watches for trouble and calls for help. A button on a cord round the neck that an old person presses after a fall. A sensor that notices the front door opened at three in the morning. A mat by the bed that reports that nobody got up today. A machine that checks blood pressure at home and sends the reading to a nurse. When something looks wrong, an alert goes to a call centre, or to a family member's phone. The heart of the idea is not the gadget but the reassurance. The person keeps their independence; the daughter two hours away stops lying awake wondering. That is what telecare is selling. As a word it is fairly new and rather official — you meet it in government documents, hospital plans, care-company brochures and news articles about ageing populations, more than in daily conversation. It is uncountable: you say 'telecare', not 'a telecare' or 'telecares'. It is also used in front of other nouns: a telecare system, a telecare service, telecare equipment. One useful distinction, though people blur it: telecare is the monitoring and safety side, while telehealth or telemedicine is actual medical treatment at a distance — seeing a doctor by video, for example. Many services now do both and call the whole thing telecare anyway.

遠距照護（也講「遠距居家照護」）。就是長輩留在家裡，靠緊急救援按鈕、感應器、遠端量測把狀況傳出去的那套服務；台灣長照政策文件裡常見。跟看診性質的「遠距醫療」不完全一樣。