Yorks ambulance staff get Airwave alarms

Yorkshire Ambulance Service is to equip more than 900 staff with Omnigard, a personal safety system from Airwave.

Omnigard allows a communications centre to monitor staff when they are working alone or in potentially threatening situations and to dispatch help quickly if required. 

It  is designed for use with the Airwave radio service that is being deployed to all ambulance trusts, which means there is no need to give staff an additional device.

Staff can activate Omingard through a dedicated shortcut key on their Airwave handset.

This allows control room staff to monitor their location and status and triggers regular safety check messages. If staff fail to respond within a set timeframe, the control room can activate support.

The trust worked with Airwave to develop the system and organised a trial with a small group of paramedics to help the company to refine the service.

David Sangster, director of UK services at Airwave, said: "This effective collaboration has resulted in an innovative technology that gives both peace of mind to staff and helps the trust to meet its duty of care obligations."

The trust has now agreed to support Airwave on the development of a GPRS version of the system for its patient transport service division.

Link: Airwave Solutions.