Daily Archives: December 31, 2008

Use of broadband in K12 in SE Minnesota

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Thanks to Dustin Artwohl at Video Guidance for sending me info and a video from Southland Public Schools in Adams in SE Minnesota. They talk about how they use broadband to better serve the students and save money.

Here’s the intro to the video from Ryan C. Luft, the Principal of Southland Middle/High School:

This past Monday, Southland and Leroy-Ostrander students and administration had the opportunity to show the State of Minnesota what is happening down here in education. We have been working with Riverland Community College in Austin, MN to deliver college level courses over our ITV system for our students. It has been a huge success! There was a meeting in Dover-Eyota where 7 local Minnesota Legislators, as well as many Southeastern Superintendents, met to discuss the bandwidth issues in this part of the state. We were asked to showcase what we are doing here at Southland and will be developing a model that hopefully will go region/statewide in a couple of years.

Here’s the video: http://stream2.video.state.mn.us/SemnetMtg.asx 

The students are now able to take classes from Riverland Community College while staying on campus, which means the money for classes-per-student stays on campus. Also the students are able to save money themselves and avoid the hassle of going back and forth between campuses.

The school talks about how they want to take the next step – meeting the Governor’s challenge to move classes online – but lack of broadband is standing in their way. They only have a T1 and that’s not enough.

They want to share instructors and kids to help make the most of their shrinking budgets.

Students from the class talk about their experience too. You can see where paying for gas to take classes off campus is a big issue for them. Plus it’s more fun to be on campus.

Sitting in the Task Force meeting on a couple of weeks ago it struck me how quickly people were ready to say and believe that Minnesota is not underserved when it comes to broadband. I suspect that people have “broadband” though 90+ percent of the state. But as someone on the Task Force said in an aside to me – aren’t they the Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force not the access task force?

Next month the Task Force is going to hear from K12 and other users. I hope they hear stories like this that demonstrate that adequate broadband is in the eye of the beholder. People are being hindered by slow speeds and we need to think about a policy that removes broadband as a bottleneck for innovation (for school, businesses, homes..).

FCC to remove adult filter on wireless broadband auction?

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Ars Technica reported yesterday that Kevin Martin has revised the FCC free wireless broadband plan so that providers no longer have to filter out smut. So the proposal is to auction off a portion of the Advanced Wireless Services 3 band (2155-2180MHz) for a free Internet service at a minimum 768Kpbs.

Up until now the proposal has also insisted that the provide filter out adult material.

Lakewood Telemedicine Update

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Our telemonitoring project is going very well with all our units in patient’s homes.  A day like today, with a winter storm blowing outside and prioritized staff visits,  highlights one advantage of telemonitoring .  Our nurses can “see” how our patients are doing by their vital signs monitor and the answers the patient gives to tailored questions like: “Are you having more problems breathing today than normal?” or ” Do you need your clinician to call you?”   The patient can be seen on days that they need to be, instead of every Monday or twice a week. 

A number of our telemonitoring patients have stated they feel more in control of their healthcare as they track their vital signs and are reminded daily which symptoms to report to the nurse.  Telemonitoring becomes part of their daily routine. 

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of presenting our telemedicine project to some of the attendees at the Connected Communities Conference in Eden Prairie.  At the conference, I had a number of session participants ask about the efficacy of telemonitoring.   Health care journals, over the last 7 years, have documented phenomenal improvements in patient outcomes through the use of telemonitoring.  The Veterans Administration has thousands of telemonitoring units across the country in veteran’s homes.  Many health insurance companies are putting their own units in patient’s homes because of the proven reduction in hospitalizations and emergent care. 

I am including some websites with research articles on the benefits of home telemonitoring.  http://www.hommed.com/Results/Clinical-Data.asp  

http://www.alexianbrothershealth.org/pdf/telehealth%20program.pdf

This website: www.healthcareitnews.com has many articles about Home Care agencies adopting telemonitoring to improve patient outcomes for people with Diabetes, Congestive Heart Failure, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and other chronic conditions. 

With the advance of technology, and broadband applications, there will be many more opportunities to make a difference with home health care.

Happy New Year!

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.