Technology is fundamental to the business of saving lives for the Netcare 911 contact centre in Midrand.
Situated north of Johannesburg, the contact centre responds to all 082 911 calls.
"The systems we have in place to receive the emergency calls, dispatch the appropriate help and track the progress of the intervention, have been custom-designed for the purpose of getting the job done," says Wynand Petzer, Netcare 911's emergency operations centre manager.
The complex system of interconnected technologies can be summarised as:
* Digital satellite tracking of all the Netcare 911 emergency response vehicles;
* Global positioning of cellphones used to make an emergency call (with prior permission);
* Bidirectional SMS communication of address and incident details;
* SMS status updates from the field;
* Electronic patient report form (ePRF) technology;
* Wireless handheld devices that send and record real-time incident and patient information;
* Digital voice recording of all incoming calls;
* An electronic mapping system;
* Databases of medicines and poisons; and
* Databases of international emergency medical protocols.
One of Netcare 911's innovative technological products, designed to make access to emergency medical assistance both quicker and easier, is 911 Alert. This is a panic button on the cellphone of a subscribing 911 Alert member that works on any Vodacom cellphone.
With the push of a button pre-programmed for 911 Alert, an immediate panic signal is sent directly to the Netcare 911 call centre, identifying the subscriber and providing the location, within 250m, of the subscriber's cellphone using GSM positioning technology.
Call response
Independent competitor analysis, undertaken last year, shows Netcare 911 is the leader in emergency call-taking in SA - with an average emergency call answer-time of just four seconds.
Call lengths, which include address taking, medical prioritisation and categorisation, average just over one minute.
"Our call centre manages in excess of 960 000 calls per annum, which is up about 25% from last year when the analysis was done," says Petzer.
He explains that when the call centre receives a call on the 082 911 line, the operator immediately requests the address of the incident.
Entering the street address into the integrated call-taking programme automatically brings up an electronic map, visually identifying the location.
The call centre agent will also establish the nature of the incident, for example, whether it is a shooting, a motor vehicle accident or a sea rescue. This enables the emergency resource co-ordinators through an integrated dispatch system to establish the appropriate vehicle and resources to be sent.
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