When you press that SOS button on your panic device, you’re in trouble. You’re seriously hurt or about to be, every minute counts. If there was a 5% chance your SOS would not be received, is that ok? Would you get on a plane if there was a 5% chance it might crash? You’re hurt and you think someone will come to help you. But nobody does, you’re losing critical minutes and maybe even consciousness.
The responder was relying on an electronic message to get the alert and it was coming from an overseas based supplier to an NZ responder. Unfortunately it got caught in one of the SPAM filters it has to get through to reach NZ and the end responder. Or maybe there was pressure on the network and overseas messaging is low priority so it was delayed by a few hours or maybe even weeks. To us that’s absolutely unacceptable and the reason we stress to customers how vital API integration is for critical response monitoring of lone workers.
Yes it’s an investment, but one we committed to at the launch of Guardian Angel. Our positioning of being Gold Band Standard has meant we have never missed an alert and every incident we have had, has had a successful fast rescue. Do you know how your alerts are being received currently?
Being told there’s an integration, is not the right answer. It could still be relying on electronic messages. The question to ask is: “Is there an API integration with the device supplier software?”.
WHAT IS AN API INTEGRATION?
API or Application Programming Interface means one computer application can speak directly to another. A bit like typing a url (link) into your search bar, this sends a request to the website you want to talk to, ie LinkedIn and voila.. you’re on the LinkedIn page. When an SOS is raised on one of our Garmin inReach or Blackline Safety devices, the SOS “types” a request to our response software which says “can I send you this?” and of course the answer is “yes you come in here” or “go away” if you’re not a Guardian Angel device”. If it’s a Guardian Angel device, voila… it pops up in front of the operator with who, what, where, and what actions they need to take. Yes, the monitoring will perhaps cost a bit more, but isn’t anything less a waste of money with no surety that it will work? And what price do you put on not just peace of mind of knowing that fast response is guaranteed, but on safety. We think all remote and lone workers deserve Gold Band Standard so that’s why we won’t discount our service or compromise on the amount of time and money we spend in the background training, testing, developing.
What happens in the event of a real-life SOS emergency? To help explain the difference between communication systems we’ve created a diagram to illustrate the impact on the likelihood of an effective response.
A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE OF SMS & EMAIL DELAYS
At Guardian Angel we get the emails and SMS’s as a back up in addition to the API request. That’s our belts and braces approach. Time and again we see seriously delayed messages (SMS in particular). One time the SMS came through 3 months later, long after we had responded to the message received via API. Of course it was 1am and the operator at first didn’t realise it was an old alert so it caused a few people to be woken up! Better safe than sorry though and we learned to train operators to double check the whole string of info on an electronic message alert to look for the original date/time of generation.
ACT NOW
For impartial advice on protecting your lone workers, get in touch for a complimentary safety discovery session.
