Blandin Foundation Grants Empowers Development of Broadband Application for the Disabled

Another highlight from my trip to Winona last week was the opportunity to sit down for lunch with Peter Walsh of Home and Community Options.

Home and Community Options provides services to people with disabilities in the area, in particular residential care at 20 different homes/buildings in and around Winona.

This visit was precipitated by the recently received news that Home and Community Options had been awarded one of the first Light Speed grants by the Blandin Foundation, an organization focused on supporting the growth of Minnesota communities.

This Light Speed grant will provide matching funds for Home and Community Options to upgrade its facilities to be better prepared to take advantage of the bandwidth of fiber, which Hiawatha will be laying for them in the near future.

But this grant is about much more than improving the networking capacity of a few buildings.

The impetus behind applying for the grant was to support the continued efforts of Home and Community Options to develop a cutting edge broadband application of its own.

As Peter explained it, today every one of their homes demands an on-site employee throughout the night to keep an eye on the residents and ensure their safety. This is both a significant expense as well as a burden on Home and Community Options’ workforce.

So, Peter and his team went hunting for a better solution, one that could leverage broadband to enable remote video monitoring. While many solutions claimed to have the answer, none quite fit all of their needs.

But rather than lament the lack of options or settle for a less-than-satisfactory solution, Peter championed the idea of developing their own application in house, which is exactly what they’ve set out to do.

The vision is to create a system whereby one person can monitor multiple homes, both with video and tied into a sophisticated alert system, ensuring the safety of their residents throughout the night.

That vision is well on its way to completion as they’re in the last weeks of initial development work, with a mid-fall date currently scheduled for a test run.

Ultimately if successful, Peter envisions the possibility that this application could not only benefit Home and Community Options but also be sold to other organizations who provide residential services to the disabled and elderly, improving the delivery of services for everyone while opening up a new revenue stream for Home and Community Options to support the development of future applications.

This is the kind of story I love to hear, being told by people who get it, and shared against the backdrop of real action, not just talk and good intentions.

And ultimately, getting buildings wired because of this grant from the Blandin Foundation sets the stage for a host of other potential uses of broadband. (For a recent rundown I wrote up of the ways broadband is impacting the lives of the disabled, check out this post.)