The use of tele-alarms in the home to enable elderly or vulnerable people to call for help in the event of an emergency is well established". Within the EPIC project (European Prototype for Integrated Care), the home telecare prototypewas developed to receive signals from different types of monitoring devices and to integrate the resulting data into the EPIC shared-care information system. We now report the use of home telecare as part of an intensive home-care scheme. The intensive home-care service provides care for very dependent elderly people, as an alternative to care in a nursing home or hospital. Care, tailored to individual needs, is delivered at intervals throughout the 24-hour period. Each client has a generic primary-care worker who visits up to five times each day between 08:00 and 18:00. Between 19:00 and 07:00, visits are carried out by designated staff, as required. The present case reports relate to two clients with whom we have used tele-alarms (Vitalcall Pet) linked to radio-based peripherals, including movement detectors, door contacts and smoke detectors. The calls were received by a tele-alarm operator who relayed them to care workers via a mobile telephone.