Happy Fall!  We are enjoying beautiful fall weather here in central MN.  Our telemedicine program is off to a great start already improving the quality of care provided to our customers.  Our six telemonitoring units are deployed and on active duty, monitoring daily vital signs and assisting the nurses in tracking their client’s health status.  One “win” we have had so far occurred after the nurse noticed her client’s heart rate was getting slower and slower during the week.  The nurse contacted the client, who at the time denied symptoms, but after checking with the MD, a heart medication was found to be the culprit.  The client was taken off the medication and the heart rate returned to normal.  Without this monitoring, the client may have had a number of days of dizziness, general malaise, or worse before the cause was determined. 

The next phase of our project will be marketing.  The telemedicine project manager and I have met with our marketing department to determine the best strategies for getting the word out about our new service.  While there are a few agencies in the area that have telemonitoring, there isn’t anyone that has this kind of technology which includes the Lifestream application- a content-management platform allowing access to information from any internet connection and disease specific content management.  The idea is that in the future, families separated by great distances will be able not only to call on the telephone, but actually see data showing that Grandma is doing well, or Dad answered on his monitor that he is having problems breathing, so he better have someone check on him. 

We are excited to be able to make a difference in health care!

The 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.