Daily Archives: July 15, 2008

Austin is going wireless

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Austin is planning to deploy a municipal wireless network in their downtown in October. According to the Austin Daily Herald there was a blip in the pilot project earlier this spring. Leaves it turns out were getting in the way of the waves (we’ve seen that in Minnesota before) but they are upgrading the equipment and the project is moving ahead.

Here are some quick facts:

The project costs $1.2 million.
They plan to eventually serve the whole city with 425 access points.
The subscriber costs have not yet been determined.

When I was a kid I used to spend a week every summer in Austin visiting my great Aunt Banty. It’s a great town, probably best known as Spamtown, USA. I suspect that they get a fair amount of tech-savvy visitors to the Spam Museum so I bet that network is well loved and well used.

Austin has about 23,000 residents and a couple of large businesses, specifically Hormel (only Minnesota-based Fortune 500 Company outside the Twin Cities) and the Austin Medical Center, which is tied to the Mayo. These companies must have their own infrastructure, fiber I assume; it will be interesting to see if the wireless has an impact on smaller businesses.

Lakewood Telemedicine Update

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Happy Summer!  A couple of weeks ago, I announced that we had completed a purchase agreement with Honeywell HomMed.  We are excited to announce that the equipment for our telemedicine project is finally here!  It felt like Christmas opening the boxes and realizing the potential that each piece of equipment has to make a difference in the lives of our clients.  I have been in contact with our designated trainer from Honeywell HomMed.  Our training dates have been set for August 5th- strategic planning and August 26-27th – all-staff training.  The all-staff training will include the set up of the secure website where every piece of communicated information from the client’s monitoring unit is held, the actual equipment set up (Blood pressure cuff, scale, oximeter, video phones, and recording unit), along with a number of equipment set-ups in our clients’ homes.  We will be working on identifying the clients who would benefit most from a telemonitoring unit.   

A number of factors will go into identifying clients who would benefit; a couple of examples being the risk for hospitalization and the client’s ability to learn how to use the equipment.  While the equipment is not complicated, a client with severe memory problems or severe illness may not be appropriate. 

Again, we are grateful to the Blandin Foundation for helping us to obtain the tools to provide better care to our clients! 

light speed communityThe Blandin Foundation is supporting four standout broadband programs through the Light Speed program. The program’s purpose is to stimulate the deployment of bandwidth intensive applications that connect local institutions to area resident’s home. This post comes from a Light Speed community leader.