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Expand your mass notification system with singlewire plugins

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The new Singlewire M2M plugin for InformaCast allows users to send notification when a contact closure has been triggered or trigger a contact closure when a broadcast has been sent.

Singlewire Software (http://www.singlewire.com), developer of innovative voice applications centered around secure, fast, and reliable mass notification, today announced the release of the new Singlewire M2M (machine-to-machine) plugin for InformaCast.

“Machine to machine” refers to technologies that allow systems to interact with each other without human intervention. The M2M plugin allows you to send InformaCast broadcasts when a contact closure has been triggered (e.g. when a door is opened, an InformaCast broadcast message is sent.) Conversely, you may trigger a contact closure when a specific broadcast has been sent (e.g. when an emergency broadcast is sent, strobe lights are turned on and escalators are reversed.)

“With the M2M plugin, organizations can more fully integrate notification into the business-critical systems on their network to protect people, improve productivity, and manage facilities,” states Ken Bywaters, executive vice-president of product development at Singlewire Software. “Our new plugin architecture in InformaCast makes implementation of this plugin quick and easy.”

The M2M plugin requires installation of InformaCast 8.0 or later and fully configured contact closures from Perle, Barix, or other manufacturers. For additional information on supported models and firmware, visit www.singlewire.com/m2m.

The M2M plugin is an inexpensive addition for any user of InformaCast 8.0 with a valid Singlewire maintenance contract. Additional plugins will be released from Singlewire on an ongoing basis. Click to watch a one-minute video and learn more by visiting  www.singlewire.com/plugins.

Singlewire InformaCast is a full-featured, network-based mass notification, emergency communication, and overhead paging system that allows users to simultaneously send an audio and/or text message to a variety of endpoints including IP speakers, Cisco IP phones, overhead paging systems, computer desktops, digital signage, SMS text, social media sites, and more.

The InformaCast platform for mass notification and emergency communication was developed in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks to evacuate federal buildings within 15 minutes. Over 3,000 organizations in 45 countries have implemented InformaCast as their notification and overhead paging system. It can be purchased through registered partners of Singlewire. For more information, visit www.singlewire.com/informacast.

via Singlewire Announces the M2M Plugin for InformaCast.

Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center is a 780-bed, skilled nursing facility located in San Francisco, California. The staff at Laguna Honda have been providing award-winning care to the diverse population of San Francisco since 1866.

Laguna Honda Hospital faces the same challenges as many healthcare facilities do today: striving  to provide excellent care and patient safety while operating on a budget. One of the toughest challenges for any healthcare institution is how to best care for patients who have Alzheimer’s or dementia, what to do if they wander from designated areas, and how to contact them and staff in a language/voice to which they’d best respond.

Laguna Honda Hospital already had an AeroScout RFID tag system in place, and they knew they needed a system that could integrate with AeroScout, track the location of patients, warn them and staff when the patient wandered out of a designated area, handle multiple languages, and store multiple taped messages.

“When we gave AeroScout the list of all our mandatory requirements, only InformaCast was able to fulfill those prerequisites for us,” explains Mike Llewellyn, Chief Operating Officer at Laguna Honda. “It did everything that we wanted.”

InformaCast allows users to pre-record and store unlimited messages and use dynamic text within notifications. The system also gives the option of recording messages or uploading WAV files in any language. Those messages can then be broadcast to a set of recipients (i.e. patients and staff), notifying them that a patient has wandered out of a designated area (determined through AeroScout RFID technology).

“InformaCast has a great deal to do with patient safety. It allows us to take better care of our dementia and Alzheimer’s patients, because with a wandering resident, they can easily walk out the front door. We have 62 wooded acres here; they could be hard to find if they get outside,” explains Llewellyn. “Out of 780 beds, we have a very small percentage with a wander issue, so we put in InformaCast just for a small handful of patients because it allows us to take care of them better.”

Before the integration of the InformaCast system, staff at Laguna Honda had to use an alarm system called a “wander guard” to help protect patients from wandering off. “Once a patient passed a certain point, a bell went off,” says Llewellyn. “Then, the buzzer kept ringing, which meant a nurse would have to get up, acknowledge the alarm, and then try to track down the resident.”

Now, when a resident begins to wander out of their designated area, “they get a pre-warning message that has been recorded in a language they understand well, or in their own loved one’s voice, that tells them ‘please turn around’. We are using that as a teaching method so they actually do turn around,” says Llewellyn.

“Some patients respond better to a voice that is familiar to them,” explains Donna Valencia, nursing manager at Laguna Honda. “InformaCast has the ability to individualize the message, not just with the language, but even if a specific person would respond better with the voice of their mom, we can use that and record that voice.”

Laguna Honda is currently using InformaCast to send messages in three different languages: English, Spanish, and Cantonese.

In addition to the message the patients hears, another notification is sent to the nurse’s station telling them where that patient is.

Thanks to the integration between the AeroScout system and InformaCast, staff at Laguna Honda is able to observe how effective the new system is. “We can actually see how well the solution is working for certain residents and if we need to change the actual voice message or what it says,” explains Llewellyn.

“It also allows us to save labor dollars because we are not using the nurse to acknowledge the alarm or find someone. We are now using the AeroScout system to find that person and the InformaCast system to turn them around.”

By integrating their existing system with Singlewire InformaCast’s powerful mass notification and messaging platform, the hospital was able to come up with an efficient and cost-effective solution to the challenge of patient wandering.

“We’re at the 120-day mark [of using InformaCast],” explains Llewellyn, “and the system has become extremely valuable to us. It allows the nursing staff to actually spend more time with the residents taking care of them and to keep better track of the residents when they are around campus.”

The integration of InformaCast has been well received by both staff at Laguna Honda and the families of the residents there. “The nursing staff is very excited about InformaCast,” says Valencia.

“The families [of the residents] see it as a positive way to take care of their loved ones,” explains Llewellyn. “They know that if the family member has a wander issue, their voice helps them return.”

via Laguna Honda Hospital Improves Patient Safety with InformaCast.

When a school is closed, protect your facility against vandalism.  Here’s how it works:

The Emergency Call Monitoring Implementation Kit will get you started with understanding the scope and details of activating call monitoring within your organization.

This kit includes:

• Video Whiteboard Session with a Senior Singlewire Voice Engineer
• 43 Page White Paper

Prepared for the Dial Plan Administrators of Communications Manager

With the release of Singlewire Software’s CallAware™ application, it is now possible to alert people to a specific number being dialed. CallAware works in conjunction with Singlewire’s InformaCast application to broadcast a message to groups of devices when a particular number or numbers are dialed. For example, if a user dials an emergency number, such as 911, CallAware can send an InformaCast broadcast to alert onsite security personnel and first responder teams.

The document is for reference only. Use your best judgement on how CallAware will fit into your organization. The examples in this document provide ideas on how CallAware might fit into your existing or upcoming deployment of Cisco Communications Manager.

Read More

While students at Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) were registering for classes on August 24, 2010, administration received information about an armed robbery suspect approaching their campus. The approximately 1,500 students were notified of the situation and a lockdown of the Arkadelphia, AR campus was accomplished through text and audio messages sent with OBU’s Emergency Notification System, supported by Singlewire’s InformaCast application.

The Vice President for Student Services at OBU activated their Emergency Notification System after a call from the local police explaining the situation. “Once [the Vice President for Student Services] understood the situation at hand, he was able to send the alert from his computer,” remarks Rob Crockett, Network Administrator at OBU.  “He was able to send an audible message with InformaCast. He was able to [send] text messages. He was able to change our webpage, and send emails to all students, faculty, and staff.”
Ouachita Baptist University currently relies on InformaCast in emergency situations only. They have pre-defined scripts that can send out pre-recorded emergency messages for events like tornadoes or a fire. “During the emergency the other day, we have a pre-recorded [message] for a possible violent situation—that’s what was sent out. We then followed it up with ad-hoc messages to tell people that they need to go indoors. And, we continued to remind people during the crisis that they need to stay indoors.”

The result was a comprehensive and efficient emergency communication to the entire campus. “It worked very successfully,” says Crockett of the Emergency Notification System. “We were able to do a complete lockdown on our whole campus within about five minutes of initiating the alert to people.”

OBU has been using Singlewire’s InformaCast mass notification and overhead IP paging solution since 2007. Like many universities, OBU started their search for a campus-wide communication system after the tragedy at Virginia Tech in April, 2007.

IT Services at OBU knew they wanted a solution that included an audible component. Crockett explained that it would be unwise to rely solely on emails or their school’s webpage for transmitting information, as not everyone is at their computers at all times. “We could send text messages, but we don’t have a way to know if it is actually going to get to the phone once it leaves our network,” said Crockett, describing another challenge facing communicating with the whole campus in an emergency. “We needed to build a layered system. We didn’t need to rely on just one aspect. We needed to rely on many aspects.”

OBU’s IT Services team also decided that their future system should be simple enough for anybody to use, but at the same time, with just a couple of clicks, notification would be sent out to a variety of endpoints.

Crockett found Singlewire’s (then Berbee) InformaCast after the Vice President for Student Services made a suggestion of his own on the campus wide communication system. “Our Vice President for Student Services asked us (IT Services) ‘Is there a way we can ring all the phones on our campus to alert people?’” At first the IT Services team thought the answer was, no. “Then I was able to find InformaCast, and started looking into it and I said ‘Yes, we can do what you are asking for,” related Crockett.

Getting messages to student housing posed another challenge, as none of the on-campus residences were equipped with IP phones. With InformaCast, “we don’t have to have a phone,” explains Crockett. “We can have zone controllers, and we can put them wherever we want to and put speakers on them. That was very appealing to us at the time, especially when we knew that the audible [method of communication] was one of the easiest ways to actually get somebody’s attention—that is what you are trying to do in an emergency: get somebody’s attention.”

After conducting extensive research, the OBU IT Services team created a custom, four-phase solution that would allow them to meet all their communication and mass notification challenges: the Ouachita Emergency Notification System. With the help of InformaCast OBU now had an emergency communication system that was simple enough for anyone to use, could ring all the phones on campus, and send messages to a variety of endpoints including speakers, text messages, and email.

In Phase I, administrators use InformaCast to send out either a pre-recorded messages to the entire campus or only a select area. They simply select the message they want to send and the areas to which to send it—all from a single screen.

“Phase II of the [Emergency Notification System] has the ability to post updates to the web, email messages, and text messages, along with instructions on how to do an ad-hoc message from an IP phone,” explains Crockett. “Phase III is where we can send an all-clear alert. Phase IV is where we can wrap up the emergency and the web alerts are removed. We package up the logs and save them for any information that may be needed later with time stamps of what we did during the emergency.”

“This was a custom built solution with the added feature of InformaCast,” remarks Crockett. “We are very proud of the system and of our partnership with Singlewire.”

OBU also uses Singlewire’s Direct Observation and Real-Time Alerting (DORA) application, which expands the notification capabilities of InformaCast, as a part of the fire alarm system in their four newest student residences. “In those four buildings, we are able to notify the residents through the fire alarm system as there are speakers in every room and every public area…. We are able to tap into that and send whatever message we are needing to send out,” says Crockett. DORA expands the capabilities of the InformaCast paging applications by allowing them to integrate with contact closure devices.

When planning the installation of the fire alarm system for the newest student residences, Crockett had the assistance of the Singlewire Support team. Crockett started talking with a member of the Singlewire Support team two years before the construction of the new residences began. He described some of the challenges they were facing and Singlewire recommended DORA. “We planned it all out and then during the installation process, we had to get it implemented,” recalls Crockett. “I had to use the [Singlewire] Support team during that period of time, and we were able to come up with some great solutions that I feel very comfortable with.”

Read More - http://info.singlewire.com/singlewire-blog/bid/52189/Ouachita-Baptist-University-Sends-Notification-with-InformaCast