Author Archives: hcoblandin

Home and Community Options, Inc.

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Light Speed Grant Recipient

Peter Walsh, Project Coordinator

Project Update

August 12, 2008

 

We met a major milestone in our development of a remote monitoring system last week when we gathered some staff and supporters together to view a demonstration of our remote monitoring system.  We have completed our installation phase and are now moving into the testing phase.  We intend to run a parallel test for several months to document the dependability and reliability of the system.  Let me share a few of the details of this system and why we are so excited about it.

 

First of all we have a residential program that consists of four adult men and their staff.  The men and their interdisciplinary team worked with our remote monitoring team to develop the conditions under which everyone could agree that the men would be safe and appropriately supervised during the evening hours using remote monitoring.  These conditions are all delineated in a document called an “Informed Consent”.  The Informed Consent will be a fundamental document in our request for a variance from the Minnesota Department of Human Services to use our remote monitoring program in an adult foster care setting.  The details of the Informed Consent document are too lengthy to share here but some of the key technology requirements are:  remote video supervision of all public spaces, remote two-way audio communication in all public and private spaces, all first floor doors and windows alarmed; smoke and fire alarms, a security system linking all alarms and devices to the remote monitoring sight, and finally, a call escalation program that guarantees a physical presence in the home in the case of crisis. 

 

We have created a portable remote monitoring station that links to all the monitoring devices in the home.  This portable unit can be run from any of our other program sites linked to our network.  It is our intention to use an existing overnight staff to provide the remote supervision, thus saving the cost of one overnight staff.  The design of the remote monitoring system allows the supervising overnight staff to sleep.  When an incident occurs at the home the remote monitoring station requires a response from the night attendant.  We have built in a couple of ways of waking the staff but if he/she is unable to respond for some reason the system will alert an on-call staff to go to the house.  This is part of our call escalation program that can be set up to call a list of staff that could respond to the home.  One of the features of the system is that once the program moves into the call escalation process it can only be resolved by someone physically being at the home.  An emergency call to 911 is automatically made if no one arrives at the home before the “fail-safe” time elapses.  The system has a number of built in redundancies and backups to ensure its dependability and reliability in case of power outages, phone disruptions, loss of internet and so forth.  There are also a number of conditions that need to be met every day in order for the remote system to be used.

 

It has taken us almost two years of development after a year of design to bring this system to the testing phase so yes, we were excited to gather and watch the remote video, engage in a two-way audio conversation with the folk at the home, monitor doors being opened and closed and to have the automated phone system kick in and make the calls from the call list.

 

We have set up the remote monitoring station in one of other program sites and are in the process of training the night attendant staff how to use it to supervise the home remotely.  While we are testing the system the regular overnight staff will continue staying at the test site but they will not engage with the men unless the remote system requests them to or if the remote system fails.  We will be running a number of test scenarios and documenting the results.  We are confident that we will need to make some fine tuning adjustments but excited to see the system go through its paces.  In a few weeks we intend to invite some interested colleagues to come for a show and tell session.  That will be another exiting milestone that I look forward to sharing with you.

 

 

 

 

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.

Home and Community Options, Inc.

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Light Speed Grant Recipient

Peter Walsh, Project Coordinator

Project Update

 

July 22, 2008

 

 

We had an exciting time sharing our progress with Bill Coleman a few weeks ago.  He came to visit so we could do a little “show & tell”.  Some of the staff who participated in our classroom training were there as well as staff who helped develop our eFile program.  The staff gave Bill a tour of the eFile program and explained that we had developed and integrated these Outlook, Excel and Word templates to reduce the amount of manual writing, to improve accuracy and to improve communication among the team that is providing care within the program.  The staff engaged well with Bill and were quite animated in sharing how much the training provided by Blandin and the Blandin support of our eFile development helped spur this project along.

 

As the staff were sharing some of the details of the program I could not help but to feel very proud of their accomplishments.  Having worked in the systems integration field for 15 + years I know how much creativity and persistence something like this requires.  These are professional care givers, not software integrators, who had a vision of a paperless system and were not put off by the “I don’t think you can do that.” response of the “experts” to whom they turned for help.  They were relentless in their quest and would accept help from whoever was available.  They got a lot of assistance from part time staff – college students – who were also excited about the possibilities.  This project has also affirmed a leadership model of empowering direct line staff to be creative.    These are some very sophisticated solutions and ones that I think could benefit other agencies like Home and Community Options; we do hope to find a way to share them.

 

After showing off the eFile system we reviewed the Remote Monitoring application.  The IP cameras acted up a little ( of course they worked just fine after he left). but we were able to demonstrate an alarm being triggered, the system calling a staff, the staff indicating that they could respond to the incident and the system patiently waiting the allotted time for the staff to log in and indicate that they were on site and resolving the incident.  I will share more on our Remote Monitoring System next time as we are just finishing the installation of our equipment in a test home. 

 

Gary Evans, CEO of Hiawatha Broadband our matching fund partner, attended our gathering and shared HBC’s plan to provide fiber to the household for all of our Winona based program sites.  Gary conveyed the excitement HBC has about being involved with Winona Non-Profits and HBC’s plan to eventually bring FTTH to all of Winona.  This will open up many more potential applications and we are already beginning to explore partnering on a project with our Public Health Department.  I think there is an exciting future for Non-Profits as FTTH becomes more available and they continue to seek ways to improve care and reduce costs.  We are thankful for the assistance we have received from the Blandin foundation.

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.

Home and Community Options, Inc.

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Light Speed Grant Recipient

Peter Walsh, Project Coordinator

Project Update

June 24, 2008

 

 

 

 

As I came out of our Technology Committee meeting last week I was struck by the excitement and personal investment of the committee members in our discussion of our goals for the year and the progress we have made.  Every year in late fall we undertake a strategic planning exercise in which we review our technology related strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.  The committee members talk to their colleagues about technology issues; seeking needs, frustrations, concerns and good ideas.  We start by having a general open discussion about our technology use and move to developing an open ended, no holds barred “wish we could…..” list.  Then we group the topics into clusters of similar or related headings and eliminate the obvious wild, impossible and impractical ideas.  We break into groups; our total committee is about 20 folk so we will have four groups of five to discuss the topics and to rank the top three in each cluster – identifying the pros and cons of their top choices.  The groups report back and we have a general open debate of speaking for or against topics on the list.  And, finally we rank our personal choices using a nominal group process.  The method of ranking varies from year to year but I personally like the one where we are each given ten stickers which we can place next to the topic of our choice – with no limit as to how many stickers you can put on any one topic.  The top ten are then organized, some fit together, and others stand alone.  Then we identify the resources needed, indicators of success, responsible parties, and approvals needed and so forth.  The entire process generally takes about four hours.

 

As we were reviewing our progress on this year’s goals and we realized the gains we have made there was a general excitement in the room.  Our discussion became more detailed when we reviewed our eFile program goals. This project is also part of our Blandin Light Speed grant and we have far exceeded our initial objectives.  The eFile participants were excitedly reflecting on the tremendous gains they have made this year.  We had hoped to have eFile implemented in three programs by the end of the year and we already have six programs using it.  There was a general agreement that the support of the Blandin grant enabled us to work on several pieces of the puzzle at once creating a synergy in that solutions in one piece turned out to benefit other pieces.  As we added a second and third test site and new staff began to grapple with some of the limitations of the beta program we began to discover solutions at a faster pace.  We reached a state of having attained the “critical mass” of minds working on the same problems.  All of a sudden the solutions were coming faster and faster.  The methodology was standardized and everything began to fit together.  New insights were gained as staff were trained, began using the program and saw additional ways that it could be used within their program.  Another interesting outcome is that staff from the individual programs began to meet for what they called “Show and Tell” sessions.  These were opportunities to show off new tools and techniques and to ask questions of each other.  These sessions really stimulated the problem solving and facilitated program standardization. The eFile coordinator reported an impressive list of functionality that is now being handled electronically in a standardized uniform manner: Client Calendaring, Client Programming, Program Documentation, Medication Administration, Client Progress Notes, Staff Scheduling, Staff Notes, Cleaning Lists, and even Menus. The task list for starting eFile in a new program has even been delineated; this is a check list that notes the steps that the program needs to complete to demonstrate that it is ready and qualified to implement the eFile program.  This check list came about as the first couple of implementation attempts did not work out because the program staff were not sufficiently trained and the program was dealing with other administrative issues at the time. 

The entire eFile Program development and implementation is a tremendous example of problem solving from the bottom up.  Those who have the need and use the system are the ones who created the solution, are vested in its success and excited to share it with others.  Management does not have a problem trying to convince other programs to try eFile because staff sell the idea to each other.  Now there is the problem of programs that don’t have eFile getting impatient because the have to wait their turn.  It will be very interesting to see where we what we have accomplished at the end of the 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.

 

 

Home and Community Options, Inc.

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Light Speed Grant Recipient

Peter Walsh, Project Coordinator

Project Update

May 21, 2008

 

 

The new news is that we have been playing with our IP Video with two-way audio.  Not quite video conferencing but quite workable.  The fiber connection between the two sites really enhances performance.  When I ran the same configuration via the cable modem the delay was objectionable but over the fiber it was almost non existent.  My next step is to train a staff person and her supervisor so they can conduct some supervision via the IP video.  We also intend to experiment with a real video conferencing solution.  We will get to that next month.

 

The staff training is in its final stages and we are just rounding up our stragglers so we can have attained a uniform base level of competency.  It is so encouraging to hear the staff verbalize their satisfaction and to have them reinforce the importance of everybody getting the training.

 

We now have eight sights implementing our eFile program.  We have four sights fully implemented, four about 75% implemented and we have another two just starting the process.  This system enables a program to go completely paperless with all of the required documentation and standardizes all the forms and templates across all programs.  Another side benefit that we just realized was how much it reduced training of existing employees who transfer from one program to another.  We just had one staff who had been using the eFile switch to a new program and there was no lag time at all as the eFile was the same in her new program.

 

Our remote monitoring program is progressing slowly, but progressing.  We have now solved our IP Intercom problem and by the end of June we should have full duplex audio streaming out of our test facility.  This is quite a robust application and we are anxious to start testing other facets of it.

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.

Home and Community Options, Inc

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Blandin Light Speed Grant

Six Month Progress Report

Peter Walsh, Project Coordinator

April 22, 2008

 

 

We have just completed the first six months of our Light Speed Project and it is exciting to provide an update on the progress we have made toward our goals.

 

All in all we have made good strides in either completing or moving forward on our goal related activities.  Perhaps the biggest disappointment has been the slow progress of HBCI making the FTTH connections.  We hope that with warmer weather their technicians will be better able to complete this task.  HBCI has indicated that they will be starting to lay underground cable now that the ground is frost free and they assure us that once they get started installations will flow steadily.

 

We are very pleased with the response of our staff and their desire for additional training.  We are excited to see the ease in which our E-File system is being deployed and we have programs clamoring to be next on our installation list.  Fortunately, that decision is made by the agency Directors and they select programs on the basis of need and readiness.

 

Our remote monitoring venture is unfolding very nicely.  We have a model home in the midst of implementation with a variety of security devices working and progress being made every day.  We have most of the call escalation program completed and are designing the user interface screens.  We are testing the phone interface and find that it works well.  I am sure we will find more things that we need to adjust as we start playing out some scenarios.  

 

We are meeting monthly with a local group made up of providers of care to the elderly who are seeking ways to improve the delivery of service to seniors within the Winona community.  They are excited about our participation and we hope to find some opportunities to implement some of our remote monitoring solutions within their care population. 

 

We are grateful to the Blandin Foundation for this opportunity to implement our broadband applications.

 

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.

Home and Community Options, Inc.

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Light Speed Grant Recipient

Peter Walsh, Project Coordinator

Project Update

April 9, 2008

 

Small steps but progress continues!!  We have another facility connected with FTTH!!  Now we can begin experimenting with some of our broadband applications.  Videoconferencing and “Thin Client” connectivity will be our first two projects and we hope to get started on those very soon.

 

Our Remote Monitoring efforts are gradually coming together.  We have two IP cameras set up with two-way audio.  This week we will be training the staff at the facility in the use of the cameras.  We will also continue testing the IP Intercom; we ran into some complications last week as it doesn’t seem to like our router.  Need to tweak it a bit.  We will also be arming the wireless window and door alarms this week and testing the remote configuration and monitoring of the security system.  The manufacturer is changing some of the interface code and we decided to wait until the new version comes out before we write our program that will integrate the security system with our Remote Monitoring program.

 

We are now on our third set of Outlook and Excel classes.  We are excited about the impact this is going to have on overall agency productivity.  We have become very dependent upon email of course and have been using that for internal and external communication for several years but the use of the Outlook Calendar and Tasks were just not evolving the way we had expected.  Now, with everyone taking the classes, we will expect everyone to use the Outlook Calendar and scheduling meetings will be much simpler.  We also clustered our Resources (conference rooms, projectors, etc.) as a separate Exchange group so staff can more easily reserve them.  This really makes managing our resources much easier.

 

Our e-File program is being implemented at a nice pace.  We now have five programs either completely running or in the final implementation stages of running our electronic file system for our Residential Programs.  This is an integration of Outlook, Excel and Word to provide a paperless record keeping system.  This e-File program was developed internally by our staff so it really fits our needs.  Now that our lead staff have seen its effectiveness they are all clamoring to be next in line for installation.  A nice problem to have!

 

We have lots of things happening on different fronts and that keeps me busy, but what fun to be able to integrate these applications on a fiber backbone!

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.
 

HCO Project Update

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Home and Community Options, Inc.

Light Speed Grant Recipient

Project Update March 21, 2008

Peter Walsh, Project Coordinator

We have had an exciting couple of weeks as we have been wiring one of our residences with a plethora electronic security and remote monitoring devices.  The men at the residence are really excited and look forward to the day when they will not need a night staff on the premise.  This is really a big deal for them as it impacts directly on their sense of self and independence. 

We will be in the testing phase for some time as we work out the bugs and develop our intervention protocols.  Surprisingly one of the biggest challenges has been full duplex IP audio.  There are not very many options to provide at-the-moment dialog.  For example to get a response to the query “Are you alright?” in places where an IP camera is not allowed such as bedrooms and bathrooms.  We have located a solution and will begin testing it this week.

 

Our employee training is starting to catch on.  The word is out that the classes are very beneficial and we now have waiting lists for the next round of classes that start this week.  So we may decide to offer a couple more sessions to accommodate the increased interest.  I think one of the responses from one of our former foot draggers speaks volumes:  “You know that if we are really going be able to take advantage of this system everyone is going to have to be up to speed.”  We may be approaching the downhill slope and all because of our Light Speed Grant!!  Thank you Blandin!

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.

Light Speed Project Update

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Home and Community Options, Inc, Winona, Minnesota  Peter Walsh, Project Coordinator. 

First the good news:  We have a FTTH connection at our main office!  This blog is being posted at “Light Speed”!  We are trying to be patient waiting for additional sites to be hooked up but the weather just has not helped.  The severe cold has caused all kinds of headaches for HBCI and their technicians have been busy keeping customers connected.  Our project is too far down the triage list to expect priority treatment.  So we are learning to be patient.

 

 

 

So this begins our lesson in barriers.  We knew going in that there would be barriers but we didn’t know what they would be.  Of course if we knew what they were going to be we could have anticipated them and been a bit proactive.  But that is the nature of many barriers; they crop up when you least expect them.  We were somewhat surprised to learn that a fair number of our staff are not ready to implement some of the advanced uses of Outlook and Excel and that we needed to offer some additional training for them.  Then we were surprised how much that training was going to cost, so we hunted around and found an independent Microsoft Trainer who is willing work with us.  Now we are endeavoring to put together a training room that we will not have to tear down after every class.  A tenant has just moved out of some of our space and we are commandeering that until it is rented.  This will enable us to set up a formal training center that we can use for a month or so to provide hands-on-training for our staff.

 

 

We are making good headway with our Remote Monitoring project and have begun wiring our first house.  We hope to begin installing cameras and security sensors next week.  Then it will be an extended period of testing and monitoring the reliability of the system. And, I’m sure we will encounter a few new barriers to overcome. (See blog entry “Obstacles to Remote Monitoring” by Dennis Theede, Executive Director, Home and Community Options, Inc.)

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.

Obstacles to the use of Remote Monitoring Technology

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Dennis Theede, Executive Director

Home and Community Options, Inc. 

Home and Community Options, Inc. is participating in a statewide discussion with the Minnesota Department of Human Services, advocates, consumers and providers to discuss the uses of technology to support persons who have disabilities.  Through discussions about service innovation, sponsored in our State, there has been excitement about using technology to support persons who are elderly or disabled and in need of support.  But with the excitement come obstacles to progressing with technology applications.  There are licensing barriers interpreted to require direct on site supervision.  Others in the field site their concerns about the reliability of technology and the fail safe measures required to insure people are kept safe when they use technology as a means of support.  Others express concerns about this technology misused to violate privacy.

 

 

These barriers cannot be ignored and must be carefully discussed with all stakeholders.  Careful measures need to be incorporated into any applications of technology to support others.  With that said, our society must be responsive to the looming demographic and resource crisis in human services.  The system must be flexible in allowing opportunities for technology to be tried and tested.  Research and data must be attained to validate appropriate applications and prevent uses that put persons in danger.  There must be reasonable allowances to try technology so that along with others in society, technology can be a means of becoming more efficient and enhancing quality of life for those who choose to use it.  Our fear of change and failure to balance dignity of risk with safety should not detour us from using technology to help others.

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.

Home and Community Options, Inc. Light Speed Grant Recipient

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  We are waiting expectantly for our first homes to be connected with the fiber to the home connection.  The cables are being strung and the technicians are bustling about as we standby and watch and pester them with questions they can’t answer; like “When can we start using it?”  We know the increased speed of our internet connections will have a huge impact on our network as we have 23 remote sits all connected together as a virtual private network.  As soon as we get two or three sites connected we can begin testing various applications. In anticipation of the greater functionality we have begun doing an assessment of the proficiency levels of our staff.  Like all organizations that implement technology enterprise wide we have a great disparity between the “power users” and the “reluctant users”.  With some 150 people to train we find it is an ongoing challenge to keep everyone up to speed.  We have conducted many in-house training sessions but still find it hard to reach the “reluctant user” as they usually do not take advantage of the training opportunities.  So our technology committee recommended that we look into brining in an outside trainer to assist us.  Our first thought was to contact the Custom Training Center at Minnesota State College-Southeast Technical.  We met with Christi Braun, a Custom Training Consultant, and reviewed our needs.  She made some good suggestions regarding the configuration of our classes; such as providing a separate class for upper management as a means of getting them excited and willing to provide leadership within their departments. She also recommended that we conduct the training in our training center so staff will have access to actual data to work with.  Christi will be getting back to us with a proposal and we hope to offer classes in late January or early February. With the holidays upon us I don’t expect too much more progress until after the first of the year.  Then I hope we will begin to see consistent progress toward our goals.

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.

Home and Community Options, Inc. – FTTH Underway

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We are very excited about implementing our FTTH project.  We have been working with HBC, plotting all of our homes on the installation map and determining the potential complications with each of them.  Some will be much easier to connect than others.  Dan Pecarina, HBC VP Technology Services, has been extremely helpful in this process.  We then prioritized our facilities to insure that the most important programs were installed first. 

HBC then began to work our project into their installation schedule.  If all goes according to the schedule we should start having our first FTTH connection within the next week and our “high priority” first 3 connections completed before Christmas!

At Home and Community Options we have been busy getting things ready for the install.  We have been experimenting with some different methods of using Outlook to manage many of our day-to-day program management and communication functions. We call this our Efile system.   As soon as our FTTH connection is made we will test some of the different file sharing techniques to determine which approach provides us with the most secure and efficient performance.  Then as new homes are brought into the FTTH network we will implement the Efile program in them.

We also have been working with the residents of one of our priority homes to prepare them to become a test site for our Remote Monitoring Program.  We met with the men and all the responsible people on their Interdisciplinary Team. This team would include people like guardians, Case Managers, HCO representative, work site representative and any other parties that would have input into the individuals care plan.  We reviewed the precautions that would need to taken in order for the men to be allowed to be home alone without a night staff on duty. 

I ordered the basic equipment we will need to set up a remote monitoring program in this home and we hope to have all the components installed by the second week of January.  Then we will begin testing the various protocols that we would need to be able to implement if the men were going to be cared for remotely.

We are very grateful for the Blandin Light Speed Initiative for this opportunity to enhance our program quality and efficiency by connecting all of our programs to a fiber network.

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.