Wednesday, January 31, 2007

CMI Steps Out with "SimplyHome"

LONG TERM CARE PROVIDER IMPLEMENTS ALARM.COM’S MONITORING TECHNOLOGY TO FACILITATE INDEPENDENT LIVING

McLean, VA – January 31, 2007Alarm.com, a leading provider of wireless, Web-enabled security and monitoring system technology, today announced a marketing alliance with Community Management Initiative, Inc. (CMI), a company dedicated to helping caregivers facilitate independent living for elderly and disabled residents. By integrating Alarm.com’s technology into its SimplyHome offering, CMI is able to provide public and private caregivers a cost-effective solution that allows care recipients to lead more independent lives.

“There are more than 10 million American adults who require some degree of supervision or personal assistance during the course of their daily routines, at great expense to their families and taxpayers,” said Allen Ray, President and CEO of CMI. “Thanks to Alarm.com’s security and monitoring solution and CMI’s SimplyHome service, many people are able to live independently or semi-independently in residential settings while their caregivers maintain a continuous electronic connection to them.”

Alarm.com’s Web interface, accessible from any internet-connected computer or PDA, provides caregivers with 24/7 access to critical information about the safety and everyday activities of the individuals they monitor. They can see when particular doors or cabinets are opened or closed, or when certain motion sensors report activity. They also can receive alerts of system activity (or prolonged inactivity) that falls outside of normal patterns and indicates that the care recipient might be in need of assistance.

“Before using Alarm.com systems as part of the SimplyHome service, our ability to support people within their own homes or apartments was limited by the need to have staff ever-present in the event that something were to happen,” said Ryan Parys, Residential Director for Innovative Services, a non-profit agency and CMI customer in Green Bay, Wisconsin. “By utilizing exception data reported to our caregivers by Web, e-mail and cell phone, our staff does not need to be physically in the residence at all times. As a result, with the same staff we’re able to support three times as many residents in a safe, independent living situation. That means more individuals are able to receive the assistance they need, without having to remain in an institutional setting.

CMI’s Alarm.com-powered SimplyHome solution lets caregivers:

  • Use Alarm.com’s patented “Up & About” monitoring feature to find out if activity has not been detected at a senior or disabled resident’s home for an extended period of time during usual hours of activity – indicating a potential emergency;
  • Define custom alert conditions to notify the care provider where there is an unexpected activity pattern detected at the residence;
  • Monitor a resident’s home for intrusion as well as environmental threats such as fire, carbon monoxide, or unsafe temperatures;
  • Receive an alert via e-mail, text message or automated phone call if the resident activates a panic button;
  • Track all activity in the residence even when the system is in an unarmed or “off” state;
  • Send automated activity reports to a care recipient’s immediate family members, reassuring them that their loved one is receiving adequate attention; and
  • Stay connected without the need for a traditional phone line at the residence.

Alarm.com is an attractive solution for a broad range of independent living applications,” said Steve Trundle, CEO of Alarm.com. “We are pleased that CMI has implemented our technology to provide a cost effective tool for public and private caregivers, which will enable many seniors and other care recipients to continue living independently without intrusive video monitoring and without compromising their personal safety or well-being.”

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About Alarm.com
Alarm.com Incorporated provides Web-enabled, wireless security and activity monitoring technology to residential and commercial customers throughout the United States and Canada. Alarm.com-enabled security systems are offered through a national network of over 450 licensed Security Dealers. Alarm.com systems are used to monitor and protect houses, apartments, offices, stores, retail chains, model homes, vacation properties, long term care facilities, data centers, trailers and more. Alarm.com technology is compatible with GE Security equipment. The company was founded in 2000 and is based in McLean, Virginia.

Alarm.com™ is a trademark of Alarm.com Incorporated. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.


About CMI

CMI delivers programs, supports, tools and services designed for caregivers of the elderly and disabled. The company was founded on a desire to provide a safe and healthy environment for individuals needing flexible, accessible and consumer-driven supports while creating opportunities for maximum independence through every service offered. CMI’s mission is to maintain “community as a way of life” for all the consumers they serve. The company, based in Asheville, NC was created in 2004 from the combined efforts of several companies that have provided supports and services since 1988. For more information please go to: http://simplyhome-cmi.com/.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Case Study: Helping Social Workers Better Monitor People with Disabilities (Part 2 of 3)

Once these units were in place with the developmentally disabled consumers now living independently, caregivers and social services workers used them in three ways--

  1. The caregivers and workers were able to login to each system via the web (using a secure log-in and password), to see the current status of all sensors, and the history of each sensor. Note that this is without regard to whether the system was in an armed or unarmed state; in point-of-fact, these systems are almost never armed, except when the residential unit was empty for prolonged periods of time. However, the Alarm.com system was able to track and archive every sensor event, all the time.

  2. Case Managers, caregivers and support staff configured each system with a few mouseclicks to send, to an agreed upon contact list, real-time email and cell phone notifications in case anything was amiss-- for example, using the Alarm.com web dashboard, one worker set a rule saying email and text-message her and her supervisor if the front door was ever open after 10 pm or before 6 am, at a particular residence, any day of the week. And each system was set to send to key personnel a "power out" email/cell message in real-time, as well as a "power restored" email/cell message.

  3. The case managers are able to use the electronic reporting features of Alarm.com to easily and rapidly compile needed weekly or monthly data to update the consumer’s care plan, for submission to various state and Federal agencies, as well as for other involved caregivers, while adhering completely to privacy standards.

The funding for this program (including the hardware and the small recurring monthly charges for the systems) came from approved Medicaid Waiver plans, relating to what is called "CIP"-- Community Integration Programs.

In Green Bay, providers and case managers have determined they manage four (4) to five (5) times more people with disabilities living independently in “Supported Home Care” than without the Alarm.com system, and in a more effective manner in terms of support and independent living.

Caregivers especially liked the following--

  • The fact that while at their desk Monday-Friday they received emails from Alarm.com on truly noteworthy events (called "notifications"), but on nights and weekend they supplemented this with cell phone text messages-- as they did not then necessarily have easy access to email.

  • The fact that no phone line was required for the system to work-- not all residential units had phone lines all the time, so this proved to make it far easier to implement the program. Further, no re-wiring was necessary for existing homes and apartments, because all the sensors communicate with the GE Simon base unit wirelessly.

  • The system’s rule-setting capability (called "Custom Threat Alerting")-- for example, one caregiver ALWAYS wanted to know if a residential unit's back door was ever open, but only wanted to know if the front door was open after dinner or before breakfast, any day of the week. Another caregiver wanted a notification when the front door opened in the morning (resident off to work), and when the front door opened in the afternoon (resident returns from work). Finally, the motion sensors were routinely “watched” via the web to ensure a given resident was up and about during relevant times.
Where needed, panic pendants were deployed to residents, but generally were not set to call “911,” but rather the phone tree of indicated support personnel in the Alarm.com dashboard. Typically bringing on the emergency vehicles with the sirens and the flashing lights is not desired unless truly necessary, but residents wanted the comfort of knowing they can get rapid assistance if and as needed from anywhere in their home at the touch of a button.

[this is Part 2 of 3; to be concluded Thursday of this week]

Monday, January 29, 2007

Case Study: Helping Social Workers Better Monitor People with Disabilities (Part 1of 3)

According to the American Association of People with Disabilities (Washington, DC), the largest national nonprofit cross-disability member organization in the United States, there are some 56 million Americans with disabilities. The increased Federal, state and local government focus on efforts to help citizens with disabilities can be tracked back to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990.

However, the fact is that many who seek to live independently (as opposed to in an institutional setting) with physical or emotional disabilities further burden an already over-taxed social services structure in a given community.

This was the very dilemma in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in early 2006, before CMI became involved, and brought Alarm.com's solution to bear.

North Carolina-based CMI is a non-profit committed to flexible, accessible and family-centered supports and services that honor the dignity, respects the rights and maximizes the potential of each individual.

In Green Bay, like in so many communities across the USA, the challenge was to manage and monitor an ever-growing number of citizens who were moving into a community setting, from an institutional setting, in an effective and efficient manner.

The answer was deploying the GE Security "Simon" unit in each residential setting, which includes the Alarm.com radio unit knit seamlessly inside it. The GE Simon, which can sit on a table or counter, or can be attached to the wall, supports up to 23 wireless sensors such as door/window contact sensors, motion detectors, flood sensors, etc. The unit is plugged into the wall, but also has a battery that lasts up to 24 hours.

The wireless sensors can be affixed with double-sided tape or screwed down easily, and the entire install takes about 30 minutes.

The unit, unlike most security systems, requires no phone line-- all the data is sent via Alarm.com's nationwide radio network.

(this is Part 1 of 3; to be continued tomorrow)

Friday, January 26, 2007

Connectedness

This WSJ article speaks about PDAs, which take the ubiquitous cell phone with its native ability to not just get phone calls, but also short-form ("SMS") text messages, to a higher level. PDAs primarily bring this simple enhancement: email.

Given that people-- and machines-- send each of us an endless array of messages daily, it's natural that we want read/write access at all times, not just when sitting in front of our laptop or PC.

In the article:

Wireless email devices used to be largely the domain of harried executives and professionals. Now, the so-called CrackBerry effect is beginning to afflict the masses. The BlackBerry has become ingrained in daily life, much like the cellphone and computer. The result is that a new demographic of obsessive users -- everyone from stay-at-home parents to college students -- is depending on BlackBerrys or similar email devices for basic daily tasks, such as checking sports scores, finding directions, emailing the children's baseball coach and keeping in up-to-the-minute touch with friends.

To this we add your home security system-- what if there were an easy-to-install "black box" you could put in your home-- or that of a loved one-- that would faithfully send you real-time email when there's trouble? And the data flies to you through the ether-- no phone line required. And you set the rules with a few mouseclicks via the web.

It's here. Place a wireless sensor on the gun cabinet, say. If it ever opens, wham-- email to that PDA on your hip. Conversely, set a rule looking for the absence of activity via the motion detector(s): If mom is not up and about by 10 am, wham-- an instant email goes to your PDA.

The right data, just-in-time, from your home (or your parents' home) to your PDA. It's now.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Where's the Panic Pendant?

The problem with a panic pendant ("PERS," or Personal Emergency Response System) is the disabled and elderly generally dislike having them hanging from their neck-- or simply forget. Worse, they've put it somewhere...and cannot find it.

Further, the person who can push the PERS button is probably at least somewhat OK.

Better are technologies that do NOT require changes to the way humans tend to-- or like to-- behave. Thus, the idea behind Alarm.com's new "Up & About" feature announced yesterday: The caregiver sets a rule in the Alarm.com web dashboard, with just a few quick mouseclicks-- if their charge is not up and moving around by say 10 a.m. each day (say the tracking window is 6 a.m. - 10 a.m.), they get an instant email and/or cell phone message. The Alarm.com system's one or more motion detectors can sense activity...and the ABSENCE of activity.

This is a very powerful feature for "private" caregivers that are taking care of siblings, parents, children, other relatives or friends, or social workers/nurses et al who are in the "public domain" and are serving residents.

A PERS cannot help the person who needs it the most-- the man or woman who has not gotten up and out of bed, or has passed out. But motion detectors are always watching....

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

NPR piece on Program that Preps Disabled Youth for Life on Their Own

This NPR piece had a key, compelling sentence:

Today, they are all living in their own apartments, and they have all jobs.

It's about a group of classmates from Portland, Maine, seeking a life on their own. The five students recently graduated from STRIVE U, an intensive, two-year post-secondary education and training program for young adults with developmental disabilities.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Elderly Woman Stranded in Bath Tub for 4 Days

Stories like this are all too common:


Our position is that caregivers, private (family/friends) and public (your tax dollar at work) are generally plentiful, but they clearly cannot be everywhere at once. Thus with solutions like ours, we can connect remote caregivers to their charges-- in the case above, one of more motion detectors would have detected an ABSENCE of activity, and one or more caregivers would be emailed and/or text messaged in real-time, to come to the rescue or alert the EMTs.

The signal would have travelled instantaneously via Cingular's data channel from the residence to our data center, and then to the caregiver(s) computer/PDA/cell phones-- no need for a phone line.

Monday, January 22, 2007

interRAI

This article by Dr. R. Knight Steel in the NJ Star Ledger on 1/1/2007 caught our attention:

I recently attended a meeting of interRAI, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster quality care for older people everywhere. Only 15 years old, it has representatives from some 26 countries. Using data on the process of care of some 15,000,000 elders from multiple nations, these researchers have published about 500 scientific papers.

Here's their Mission/Vision:

Our goal is to promote evidence-based clinical practice and policy decisions through the collection and interpretation of high quality data about the characteristics and outcomes of persons served across a variety of health and social services settings.

Although each instrument in the interRAI family of tools and applications has been developed for a particular population, they are designed to work together to form an integrated health information system. interRAI instruments all share a common language, that is, they refer to the same clinical concept in the same way across instruments. Using common measures enables clinicians and providers in different care settings to improve continuity of care, as well as to integrate care/supports for each individual. Common language also allows families, advocates and public payers to track the progress of program participants across settings and over time. Such information can yield important findings regarding what works to improve an individual's quality of life.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Our Book Shelf

We do a lot of reading about how to help the disabled and the elderly live independently. Check it out to the right-- we'll be updating it frequently.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

First Choice : Us

A recent study in England indicates that the preferred way to care for elderly family members is to do it inside the family. The fact is, new tools and technologies, many of which leverage the Internet, make this more easily possible. From the article:

The research also shows that, despite all the talk of the demise of the family and caring in our society, when it comes to caring for an elderly relative - our preferred option is to do it ourselves.


Also: Of those who believe their relative will go into a residential home, only 42% would be happy with that decision, with 51% either feeling guilty about the decision or not being happy, but being unsure of what else they could do. And of those who said they will try to manage the care themselves or with family, only 57% said they would feel happy about that decision.

Most interesting was the fact thatfamily members were mostly UNAWARE of their options, and especially how to effectively and efficiently proceed with being the caregiver themselves.


Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Kitchen Fires

The Home Safety Council in Washington, D.C. has this mission:

The Home Safety Council® (HSC) is the only national nonprofit organization solely dedicated to preventing home related injuries that result in nearly 20,000 deaths and 21 million medical visits on average each year. Through national programs, partnerships and the support of volunteers, HSC educates people of all ages to be safer in and around their homes. The Home Safety Council is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization located in Washington, DC.


There are some 18,000 kitchen fires per year, and in many cases this is a function of the stove (electric or gas) being turned on...and then forgotten.

The HSC has this informative one-pager on kitchen cooking safety.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Tracking Where People Are with GPS

The Miami Herald has a story today about GPS-embedded shoes.

You can forget to carry your phone, and you can forget to wear a watch, but you can't leave the house and forget to put on your shoes.

IssacDaniel has developed shoes embedded with GPS technology that can locate the wearer anywhere in the world. His design allows wearers to press a button hidden near the shoe's lace to send a distress signal.

The shoes are called Quantum Satellite Technology by his company, Isaac Daniel, and are planned to hit stores in March at a price of $325 to $350. Daniel said he is in talks with a large department store chain, but he would not reveal details until the deal is finalized. A limited number of shoes are available at isaacdaniel.com and will be delivered in February.

The target markets appear to be Alzheimer's patients, EMS personnel, and children/teens. The GPS industry in regards to people-tracking has long been held back, however, by consumer privacy concerns.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Kids Helping Parents

In a Wall Street Journal article on January 5, 2007 entitled "Daily Chores for Young Caregivers: Parents Turn to Children for Help" by Clare Ansberry, there were these provactive paragraphs:

PAULDING, Ohio -- Every morning, at about 6, Jordan Wilhelm goes into his parents' room to lift his father out of bed.

The 17-year-old high-school senior carries his dad down the hall to the bathroom, his mother following behind. He helps her get him into the shower, and then dressed, slipping pants on his father's legs and coaxing his arms through shirt sleeves.

During the week, if his father falls out of his wheelchair or has to use the bathroom, he calls Paulding High School, saying he needs Jordan home. With the school less than a mile away, Jordan arrives in minutes. He helps his father back onto his green recliner in the family room, draping a plaid blanket over his legs, before returning to class. "It's my life," says Jordan. "Even when I was young, he couldn't do a whole lot."


The fact is, Jordan probably has a cell phone-- every high school kid carries one today, it seems. A monitoring system from Cambridge Care can help families like these, with features such as "No Activity Monitoring." This means if the motion detector(s) do not sense movement for a certain period of time, an SMS text message can be sent to the phone of one or more caregivers, instantly. Thus family and friends can respond and help when there's the appearance of trouble, whether they're in the backyard or across town. The cell phone becomes the essential electronic tether....

Monday, January 8, 2007

Help for Caregivers-- respite, and the right tools

On the last day of last year, there was a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal, along these lines:


12/31/2006, by Laurie McGinley
For years, Katie Den Ouden, 21, and her brother Christian, 27, of Des Moines, Iowa, have taken turns caring for their mother, who has multiple sclerosis and often has to use a wheelchair. During Ms. Den Ouden's senior year in college, she took online courses from home so her brother could stay in medical school. Earlier, he took a break from school so that she could study in New Zealand.

"The priority has always been Mom," says Ms. Den Ouden, but the caregiving has "made me a lot more stressed."

Congress recently passed legislation authorizing $289 million over five years for states to increase the availability of respite care -- which is aimed at giving family caregivers a break to run errands, see friends, visit their own doctors or just rest.

Some 44 million Americans care for an adult family member who has a chronic illness or disability. The physical and emotional toll is high.

Relief Takes Many Forms

We believe that relief can come in other ways, too-- such as the right, non-invasive monitoring tools that help caregivers know when there's a problem in real-time, leveraging our connected society today-- the web and PDAs, email and cell phones. Watch this space in coming weeks, where we hope to get a conversation going about helping the disabled-- young and old-- live independently, safely and securely, with the minimum burden on their caregivers, whether they be private (friends & family) or public (social workers et al).

Today's technology allows far better choices for the disabled...and far better methods for those who help the disabled.