Tackling homelessness through technology

A couple of months ago, I attended a reception for the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (CHIP). This particular event was designed to recognize and celebrate the work they have done over the past 10 years. They've made great progress in a decade.

During that event, I learned about their Blueprint to End Homelessness, and since then I have been learning more about some of the tactics that are being used to end homelessness in our community.

So as I was scanning my newsfeeds the other day, I ran across this blog post from Nedra Kline Weinreich's Spare Change. The post looks at how the city of Los Angeles is using "Heat Maps" (visual representations of data within a specific geographic region) to track patterns among the homeless population in the city. You can see an example in the image below.

This application speaks to an interesting point about data. I think by now everyone realizes the importance of capturing data, but it's the application and analysis of the data that fuels insights and drives progress and change.

Flash Drives for Storing Medical Data

Many of the nonprofit organizations we serve provide health services to the central Indiana community, so I thought this might be of interest. This product is still in development, but it's an interesting concept: a biometric flash drive that records things like lab results, x-rays and other information while supposedly complying with the Health Information Privacy and Portability Act.

Click here to read the full report from Engadget.