International SOS SA will today "plug in" to the global Magellan network, operated by Singapore-based International SOS, a medical risk management company that helps in the coordination of worldwide medical assistance.
The system will allow the local branch of International SOS to share member information with other international alarm centres in times of medical emergencies.
Steven Nicoll, International SOS regional ICT manager, says the total global investment in the project is R43 million, which includes software and infrastructure costs.
According to Nicoll, Magellan is a service-oriented architecture-based medical assistance and financial system. The company's internal development team in Singapore designed the system in partnership with Microsoft development house Avanade.
"The system has been running successfully in three of our sites - Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore - for three months," says Nicoll.
"Case information will now be shared between centres, with management and clients having consolidated reports. The system will provide a single virtual alarm centre for doctors and customer service executives working in real-time."
He says prior to the deployment of Magellan, every alarm centre was managed independently, each having its own information sources.
"Management and sharing of member information between other global alarm centres was not achieved. With Magellan's replication capabilities consisting of SQL services, Web service replication and document replication services, one incident can be treated as one case globally, versus six or seven cases depending on the alarm centres involved."
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