FLEET MANAGEMENT
Airwave, the emergency services network provider, reveals how Ambulance Trusts are now fully onboard. T
he Airwave TETRA network in Great Britain was purpose built to meet the
needs of the emergency services: resilient, secure and covering 99.9% of the country’s land mass.
It is interoperable, meaning that for the first time members of the different emer- gency services and public safety organisa- tions can communicate with one another, resulting in improved and co-ordinated emergency response.
In 2006 the Department of Health an- nounced the Ambulance Radio pro- gramme:
the replacement of the old
analogue system with the Airwave digital radio service for use across all English am- bulance Trusts, with Scottish and Welsh trusts shortly following. Since roll-out was completed, all ambulance trusts now enjoy greater coverage, improved voice qual- ity, reliability and new functionality, not to mention the benefit of communicating with fellow emergency respondents across Great Britain.
Collaboration
Yorkshire Ambulance Service Trust is one of many Airwave customers pioneering the next evolution of communications so- lutions available by collaborating with the company on R&D.
David Sangster, director of UK Services, comments: “Our single-minded focus is to create solutions for our customers that support their challenges around ever tight- ening budgets, improved performance tar- gets and greater efficiency savings. We do not view this as a transactional relationship but a partnership based on mutual under- standing and aligned strategy. It is not easy to reach that level of partnership but it’s something we strive for.”
The first successful collaboration with Yorkshire Ambulance has been Om- niguard, a lone worker personal safety so- lution developed to operate on the TETRA radios supplied as part of the radio com- munications service. The advantage of this solution over others is that it is incorpo- rated into the same radio device, negating the need to carry multiple devices and it is easily integrated into the control room communications infrastructure avoid-
ing costly third-party intervention. With the Omniguard monitoring solution, lone workers have increased confidence to per- form their duties and control rooms can deploy more single crews if necessary to challenge response targets. An additional success point for Yorkshire will be if Om- niguard can demonstrate it has contributed to overall performance since roll-out.
Commitment
Running the world’s largest TETRA net- work of its kind has its challenges and carries huge responsibilities for Airwave. While other nations look to Great Britain to set the standard, Airwave is committed to maintaining the highest level of service.
David Sangster continues: “The challenge for Airwave is to keep our customers reas- sured; we use the best technology to deliver critical voice communications and we are the leading experts in delivering mission critical communications. We learn more each day on how our customers use the Air- wave Service and we channel this knowl- edge into our R&D. The recent launch of Tetra Messenger is a good example of this.”
The Tetra Messenger is the first of its kind in the world; a two-way messaging and alerting device running on a TETRA network. This will be used by community
responders who are either voluntary or retained personnel of the core emergency and public safety services.
Traditionally these groups have been relied upon but may have been used inefficiently resulting in costly operations for the emer- gency services or, worst case, the support coming too late to make a difference. For the first time, these essential emergency re- sponders will have access to secure and re- silient Airwave services empowering them to play their role alongside their permanent co-workers.
Airwave has been leading the way for more than ten years and the company is now moving into sectors such as transport and utilities as more organisations recognise the benefits in secure, reliable and resilient critical communications.
Airwave designed, built and operates the largest public safety radio communica- tions network in the world, delivering critical voice and data communications to organisations that provide vita public service. This includes over 250,000 users from the police, fire and ambulance ser- vices as well as local authorities, utilities and transport providers.
FOR MORE INFORMATION Visit
www.airwavesolutions.co.uk national health executive Sep/Oct 11 | 77
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