The NWAS NHS Trust’s community first responders are volunteer members of the public who are licensed and trained by the ambulance service trust to provide critical care in emergency medical situations in their communities in North West England. They provide life-saving treatment in the critical time between the 999 call and the arrival of the paramedic or ambulance.
The pagers, which Motorola Solutions describes as being lightweight and compact, meet all of the trust’s operational requirements and can be integrated with its existing command, control and crew alerting systems. The built-in GPS receiver functionality allows the trust’s control rooms to send messages to volunteers within a three-mile radius of an incident who have checked in as being available. In combination with the trust’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system and the Airwave TETRA network, controllers can immediately identify and allocate the available resources.
“We use the TETRA pager and the Airwave network to allocate our community first responders (CFRs) to life-threatening incidents close to where they are located, ” said Mark Evans, NWAS community engagement and resuscitation manager and blue light collaboration operational lead for Cumbria and Lancashire area. “We are set to update our system to Airwave’s new TETRA pager which can still be used where there is no mobile phone signal.”
“In those critical moments when every second counts, first responders and control rooms need to communicate quickly and easily,” said Phil Jefferson, vice president for Western Europe and North Africa at Motorola Solutions. “We are very proud to equip the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust with our TPG2200 TETRA pagers and help them to leverage the power of the Airwave public safety network for future requirements.”