Richard's Blog

Therap will be hosting a Regional Conference in Florida December 4-5, 2012. The conference will be at the Palm Beach Airport Holiday Inn.

There will be specific sessions on agencies using Therap and working with APD.

Additional information will be available on our website in the coming months.

The following is from the Health and Human Services Website.   This seems a free federal webinar which might be of interest to people.

Mobile Devices Roundtable: Safeguarding Health Information

Real World Usages and Real World Privacy & Security Practices

Register for the Roundtable | Public comment is now OPEN

Background: One of the key goals of the Federal Health Information Technology Strategic Plan is to inspire confidence and trust in health IT and electronic health information exchange by protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of health information. ONC’s Office of the Chief Privacy Officer (OCPO), along with the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), recently launched a privacy and security mobile device project. The project builds on the existing HHS HIPAA Security Rule – Remote Use Guidance and is designed to identify privacy and security good practices for mobile devices. The identified provider use case scenarios and good practices to address those scenarios will be communicated in plain, practical, and easy to understand language for use by health care providers, professionals, and other entities.

Roundtable Purpose: To gather public, industry, and subject matter expert input that will help inform the development of an effective and practical way to bring awareness and understanding to those in the clinical sector regarding securing and protecting health information while using mobile devices.

New York State has a deal with Verizon Wireless on special pricing for certain non-profits and state agencies. The link to Verizon Wireless  pricing is here .  Each agency would have to figure out if you are eligible. Thanks to Jarrod for sharing that link

Are users aware of similar special pricing in other states they can share.

Therap will be hosting a regional conference in Iowa at the Holiday Inn  Northwest on Merle Hay road in Des Moines on September 19-20, 2012.

Further information will be available on the website.  Also check out Therap’s midwest blog for more information on Iowa and the midwest.

ATT has posted this information  on their website regarding their throttling back usage for customers with unlimited data plans.  They wrote

Each time you use 3GB or more in a billing cycle, your data speeds will be reduced for the rest of that billing cycle and then go back to normal.

 

The New York Times had an article on this issue and wrote

Some of the nation’s largest wireless phone companies are getting around those plans by slowing down a smartphone’s Internet transfer speeds for heavy users. The practice serves as a backdoor limit of data by making some downloads impossible.

It turns out that wireless companies are now offering options to get mobile to mobile plans which don’t include voice/phone. However, the really heavy data is used by streaming HD movies.

ATT has a table on their website which shows that 1 hour of data consumption of streaming an HD movie is 306 MB while 1 hour of email or social media is 5MB.

We are trying to run some tests to see how much data requirements a user of Therap in various community settings would have.

There are also options that agencies have such as blocking a tablet from going to any site other than Therap or other preapproved sites. In addition, there are software tools to manage devices that agencies have distributed to staff.

I welcome any thoughts or comments people might have on these issues. What are your experiences? How are you managing to keep costs reasonable?

Therap will be holding a Regional Conference in San Diego, CA on December 4-5, 2012.  The conference will be geared for agencies providing service to people with developmental disabilities.

Additional information will be available on the website.   Also keep an eye on Kevin Dierks blog or contact Kevin for additional information.

The conference will again be at the Ramada Conference Center on Kearny Mesa road in San Diego.

I just met with Verizon Wireless. I am trying to get some lower cost plans available for Therap users to use mobile data plans.

I am looking at some data only (no voice) plans for mobile devices – basically tablets.

Currently one youtube video could use more bandwidth than a months worth of Therap data entry. At least that is my thinking. Does anyone have statistics on how much bandwidth they are using for remote documentation over Therap. Many agencies have said they are not yet using data plans given the high cost.

Part of the problem is the base pricing. 25GB  a month is $10 and 5GB a month is $60. That is 200 times the amount of usage for 5 times the cost. I am trying to put some sort of package together with Verizon that might be of interest to Therap users.

We are adding some discussions on the  Mobile Sig page.  The first question is

Are you allowing staff members to use their own cellphones at work? How is this being monitored and documented?

You are welcome to register and join the discussion. We are hoping to have weekly questions on the different SIG pages.

The following is train and bus information to the Ramada in East Hanover, NJ where the Therap conference is being held. If you contact the hotel in advance, they will pick attendees up from the train or bus stops.

And the train information is as follows.

We use the Morris Plains Train Station

Route 202 intersection of Speedwell Ave. and Rt. 53, Morris Plains NJ 07950

It is 6.4 miles from the hotel, about 14 minutes away.

The Bus information is as follows.

From New York you need to take Community Coach Bus – Route 77.

That will take you to the Whippany Diner stop about 2 miles down the road from us and just ask them to keep going to the Loews movie theater stop.

Naim received his PMP certification after passing the PMP (Project Management Professional) certification exam. The certification is issued by the PMI Institute (Project Management Institute).

Naim is one of our lead programmers. Naim has met many Therap users on his meetings with developmental disabilities agencies around the country. Naim will also be at the National Conference next week.