NG911 IS CHANGING THE FUTURE 5 WAYS EMS WILL BENEFIT
From keeping EMS responders safer, to better serving your community, the potential benefits of an NG911 system are significant
C aptain Rob Reardon vividly remembers the 911 call from a desperate mother. “Her one- week old baby wasn’t breathing,” re- calls Reardon, the fire official oversee- ing the regional emergency call center in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Years earlier, frustrated that the antiquated 911 system wasn’t delivering help fast enough, he’d lobbied the state to have his center selected as an early adopter of Next Generation 911 (NG911). On this day, the mother and her infant benefited from Reardon’s push. Instead of losing critical seconds routing the cell phone call through state police and then to the appropriate dispatcher, the NG911 system recognized the caller’s location and automatically connected her to the call center in Duxbury. “That call was out in five seconds,” says Reardon. “We had one person on with the mother teaching her how to do CPR. In the background, you can hear another person dispatching police, fire and EMS.” A week later, Reardon’s team received a video of the infant on the mend. “That’s the stuff that makes the difference,” he says. He urges communities across the nation to recognize the importance of quickly moving their legacy 911 sys- tems into the digital age.
and their patients. Here are five of the most important: IMPROVING LOCATION ACCURACY NG911 helps address one of EMS re- sponders’ most urgent needs—finding the caller. “The biggest frustration we have is time spent identifying where a caller is,” says Brian Dale, Associate Director of Medical Control and Quality Processes for the International Acad- emies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED). “If you have improved location accu- racy, then you can dispatch the right response faster than we can now.” Almost 80 percent of all 911 calls are made on cell phones instead of land- lines. Current cell phone technology doesn’t pinpoint the caller’s location with precision, delaying response times. PSAPs to zero in on a caller’s location — especially wireless callers — faster and more accurately. “The legacy sys- temwill give you a street address but won’t specify which floor in a 20-floor high-rise building,” says Matt Zavad- sky, President-Elect of the National Association of EMTs. “With NG911, we’ll know they’re on the 17th floor instead of wandering around.” Location is more than a street address. With NG911, a crashed vehicle equipped 1 The NG911 all-digital environment will enable software that allows
to NG911? “On the scale of one to 10, it’s a 14,” says Dia Gainor, Executive Director of the National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO). The reasons boil down to a simple fact: NG911 is everything today’s 911 system is not. While consumers have voice, video and rich digital data at their fingertips, 911 dispatchers are limited by legacy technology. NG911 means moving to an internet protocol-based system that allows enhanced communication between the public and 911. In addition to improved response times by limiting delays and misdirected calls, NG911 also enables the ability to text directly to 911; share digital information, such as critical health data during a medical emer- gency; and adopt digital and mobile innovations such as smart sensor data transmitted from wearable medi- cal devices. “It’s a game changer for EMS,” says Dr. William Fales, Medical Director for the Michigan Bureau of EMS, Trauma and Preparedness. Adds Gainor, “NG911 saves resources, saves lives and reduces the risk for EMS.” The transition to NG911 can provide some major benefits to EMS providers
How urgent is the need for upgrading
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