Stockton Security Services, part of the borough council, decided to expand its blood bike rider emergency motorcycle dispatch service in Cleveland to neighbouring Northumbria and Cumbria. The security service reviewed its infrastructure. Samples and blood supplies are carried to and from blood banks, hospitals and other blood and tissue sampling centres.
Relying solely on radio communication to track and monitor despatches was no longer enough; a new command and control centre was needed. Stockton chose icomply’s VTAS Pro software. It’s been live for 12 months now.
At Stockton, Graeme Small, Assistant Security Services Manager said: “icomply’s dynamic iMAP technology enables us to track all our riders, wherever they are. Each rider has a lone working and tracking device, which uses GPS tracking and has two-way speech and panic alarm facilities. Each rider’s position is displayed live in our control room on icomply’s VTAS Pro open integration platform. Cross border handovers and cooperation are coordinated and logistically synchronised. This means we can now track all blood riders on live maps anywhere within the UK and we can track and respond to any incident or emergency any rider encounters.”
Before, the control room relied on riders calling on their mobiles to check with any problems, which could cause delays. The new system offers real time progress tracking of samples, refining the timeframe from analysis to treatment for the patient. The new product has brought real time lone worker protection and support for the volunteer riders who operate 24 hours. The icomply software has streamlined communication links, reducing the amount of calls operators and riders take and make, reducing related costs and delays, and increasing riders’ safety and response times, Graeme Small added.
Michael Gallagher, icomply’s Director of Business Development said: “the opportunity to provide UK wide monitoring of such a critical service was an interesting and challenging project. Utilising some of the existing systems we have developed on similar asset and personnel monitoring projects we were able to expand this to provide a cost effective monitoring system to this life saving service.”
The solution interfaces with the icomply software at Stockton on Tees ARC, which has seven icomply VTAS Pro operator clients and interfaces to concierge, intruder detection, analogue and IP CCTV, lone worker and icomply’s wonderwall display system.
