Two IT professionals used their ASP skills to build Lotsa Helping Hands, a free Web community designed to help manage logistics for caregivers
After building Massachusetts-based Xevo Corp. into a late-'90s application service provider (ASP) powerhouse, only to see the company dissolve in a financial tangle just a few years into the new century, Hal Chapel and Barry Katz decided to apply skills honed in a small business to a higher calling.
"Arranging meals, rides to schools and children's events, baby-sitting, doctor visits, housekeeping -- all of these and more need to be addressed constantly when you're dealing with a significant illness or ongoing disability," Chapel says.
Lotsa Helping Hands
Keeping track of who's doing what, and when, was exactly the sort of endeavor that a well-thought-out and implemented online community Web site could make simpler.
Which is exactly what Chapel and Katz created with Lotsa Helping Hands, a free-to-the-public venture unveiled in late summer 2005. Chapel is the project's CEO; Katz is its president. Although they designed it primarily for individuals, the project also has implications for helping businesses to manage the caregiving commitments of their employees.
The core of the project is the online community of caregivers focused on each patient. The Lotsa Helping Hands Web site offers each such community a private mini Web site, created and managed by the community's coordinator. The coordinator assumes responsibility for maintaining the site's membership list, adding new events to the calendar that's the caregivers' focal point, and adjusting the site's content as volunteers sign up for specific tasks at specific times.
Once a task is spoken for -- the volunteer fills out a simple form agreeing to provide, say, a Friday evening meal or be a Saturday chauffeur -- the calendar is instantly updated, avoiding duplication of efforts. Volunteers also receive e-mail reminders of their commitments at regular intervals.
As they put the program together using both custom and public-domain code, Katz and Chapel paid special attention to details familiar from Carol Katz's illness.
"Things like children's food preferences," Chapel says, "as well as simple ways to keep track of which menus have been delivered when, helps make sure the right food gets delivered -- and that the family doesn't get spaghetti three nights in a row." The site shares all such information with the volunteers.
In addition to the calendar and coordination tools, the site provides message boards, photo-posting, and other features designed to increase the sense of community.
Their ASP experience made Katz and Chapel relentless in ensuring each community site's security and privacy. "We were used to highly secure data environments and brought that to the endeavor," Chapel recalls. Each community's coordinator sees to it that only authorized volunteers have access to the community site. Member names and e-mail addresses are never shared.
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