March 1, 2009                                                                           Contact: Brian C. Cronin

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                       Phone: 208.439.8493

208.724.1959

Boise Company Aids Special Olympics Athlete Healthcare

(BOISE) – Caring Technologies, a Boise-based company, sponsored and sent volunteers to the Healthy Athletes Program of the Special Olympics 2009 World Winter Games, held Feb 7-13, 2009 in Idaho.

Healthy Athletes has been providing care to people with disabilities since 1997 with crucial medical, dental, vision and podiatry screenings. Over 400 volunteers gave 800 athletes more than 2,000 screenings in the Student Union Building at Boise State University. Many people with intellectual disabilities around the globe lack even basic medical care, and hundreds of Special Athletes had serious health issues requiring attention.
 

Caring Technologies staff provided technical equipment and expertise and captured video and audio of          interviews and successful treatments taking place. Andrew Choufrine, a company volunteer, said he was      Caring Tech. staff assists in vision screening    “thrilled to be a small part of helping so many people.”
 

Caring Technologies is a health IT firm providing Behavior Imaging solutions to schools and clinics for people with disabilities. Behavior Imaging, currently most popular in autism treatment, is the capture and secure sharing of behavior on video in a natural environment for treatment, training, assessment, or other clinical purposes. As with autism, people with intellectual disabilities often lack access to care and stand to benefit form an online personal health record.

“This was important to us because our mission is to provide healthcare to those who don’t have access to it, and the Healthy Athletes Program was an exact parallel,” said CEO Ron Oberleitner, adding, “we are proud to have been associated with the Special Olympics and shown them a great Idaho welcome.”

A company spokesman confirmed that Caring Technologies looks forward to helping further Special Olympics Healthy Athletes' mission in the future with its relevant technology services. Caring Technologies’ online health record, where video and other data is collected for annotation and remote consultation, is touted as a solution to help people with disabilities year-round.

More about Healthy Athletes (NPR)