Regional Medical Response Coalition Deploys Solution To Answer Urgent Need For Emergency Preparedness

In response to the urgent need for first responder preparedness during public safety incidents, Michigan's District 1, composed of nine counties in the south central region of Michigan with more than 1 million citizens deployed Codespear's interoperability and broadcast alert software solution.

"Codespear is a great tool for us and we're really happy about the enhanced level of emergency preparedness it allows us to have," said Dr. Don Edwards, District 1's Medical Director. "We're really happy to have Codespear in place, because of the ease with which it helps us, as first responders, to meet the needs of our communities."

John Waters, EMS Supervisor for Livingston County and Chair of the District 1 Regional Medical Response Coalition explained that the District is using both Codespear's alert otification and communications interoperability "to alert those key people in the event of an emergency." Those key people are hospital and pre-hospital management, dispatch units, public health personnel, fire, police, and EMS teams and other key first responders that include amateur radio operators.

Medical Director Edwards continued, "This solution is simple to use and allows us to integrate our communications into a single language that we can all use. Now we have an alerting system that allows us to reach every area of our district, whether urban or rural, and we can do that on everything from conventional telephones to cell phones to pagers, to PDAs, and, most importantly, to EMS field radios. That's a big deal for us." In addition to the versatility with disparate devices, Central Dispatch is also able to confirm that their people have been notified and are responding to the emergency as directed.

With Codespear's SmartMsg in place, District 1 has achieved full communications interoperability. The District can activate pre-determined evacuation plans and mass alerting, should the need prove necessary, and they can also meet their daily internal needs of managing first response teams in everything from scheduling overtime to confirming receipt of District-wide announcements.

SOURCE: Federal Signal