Shropshire Ambulance Service callout EMR's using Criticall's EmergencyCall

Critical event notification system put to use in Shropshire for faster mobilisation of emergency medical responders.

In the last year Shropshire Ambulance have pioneered an Emergency Medical Responders Scheme which has helped them achieve a 76% record in responding to "immediate life threatening" calls within 8 minutes.

The scheme relies on mobilising local Emergency Medical Responders (E.M.R's) who are highly trained in first aid to rapidly respond to incidents within their own area.

To date, Shropshire Ambulance Service have relied on an agent manually calling people to see if they can respond. The problems with this process are the time it takes to make the calls, knowing how and where to contact people, keeping lists up to date, and accurately recording and reporting who has been contacted and who can attend.

To help improve this process Shropshire Ambulance Service turned to event notification specialists Criticall Limited. For the last 8 years, Criticall have specialised in providing organisations and communities with software solutions that allow them to react to and manage emergency situations. Criticall's EmergencyCall solution automates the delivery of critical alert information to anyone that needs to be contacted in case of emergency. The callout and response system is used all over the world by energy companies, emergency services, local government, manufacturing, telecoms and finance companies.

An operator in the Shropshire Ambulance Service 999 room is responsible for using EmergencyCall. When an "immediate life threatening" call comes in they will select the incident type and region on their EmergencyCall Screen. They can also type in some text about the incident including the exact location address. They then press a button to initiate the callout, which will go out to Emergency Medical Responders in the selected region.

EmergencyCall automatically calls the First Responder and delivers a voice message asking them if they are able to respond to an incident in their region. They can press one on their phone keypad to indicate if they are able to respond. The details of the incident are then sent in a text message to their mobile phone or pager. If they indicate that they are unable to respond, EmergencyCall will automatically escalate the call to another Emergency Medical Responder until someone is found.

Marcus Vaigncourt-Strallen, CEO at Criticall, said, "EmergencyCall is ideally suited to any Emergency Service requiring first responders. We hope to role out similar systems to other Ambulance Services around the country."