Wilford Hall Medical Center Deploys AtHoc IWSAlerts to Provide Medical Facility With Network-Centric Emergency Notification System

AtHoc, Inc. today announced Wilford Hall Medical Center has deployed AtHoc IWSAlerts to quickly reach personnel regarding emergency situations. As a military medical facility, Wilford Hall will use the network-centric alerting system in many ways that are similar to AtHoc's other Air Force base customers, but they also have unique requirements created by the nature of the medical work performed at the facility.

Wilford Hall Medical Center, the Air Force's largest medical facility, is a national resource, providing complete medical care to military healthcare beneficiaries in the south central United States as well as specialized care to patients referred from all over the world.

Wilford Hall is using AtHoc IWSAlerts to alert personnel to the types of situations most domestic military installations would expect -- e.g., threats posed by weather or man-made sources. Yet unlike most military facilities using the system, people in a hospital environment cannot be easily mobilized in response to the threat. Early warning is critical for Wilford Hall to be able to respond to emergency situations effectively.

In addition to mobility challenges, Wilford Hall faces a different set of emergency scenarios -- scenarios uncommon for an Air Force base but very common for hospitals. These emergencies can range from biological or chemical contamination to a large influx of patients coming into the hospital due to an accident. Regardless of the situation, the medical personnel working at Wilford Hall need quick access to accurate information.

The Medical Control Center at Wilford Hall fills the critical role of keeping in touch with Lackland's base command center to track emergency situations. The Medical Control Center serves as the eyes and ears for the medical community, and if an emergency situation arises, the group is responsible for alerting Wilford Hall personnel. When an emergency situation arises, the Medical Control Center uses AtHoc IWSAlerts to alert the more than 5,000 computers distributed across the five-building medical facility.

"Wilford Hall fulfills an incredibly important mission for the Air Force. Effectively protecting the medical center, its personnel and patients depends heavily on situational awareness," said Guy Miasnik, president and CEO of AtHoc. "Regardless of the type of emergency scenario -- whether military or medical -- Wilford Hall can provide alerts to its staff with specific instructions for action based upon the scenario and the recipient's role within the organization. This level of granularity in the alerting process can help Wilford Hall contain and combat emergency situations."

AtHoc IWSAlerts combines a network alerting capability with a robust emergency notification management system. Using its network alerting capability, the system enables military installations to reach all personnel using a network-connected device, such as desktop PCs or PDAs. The alerts reach personnel in times of emergency with targeted messages and instructions for action -- all within an average of one minute.

To manage the alerts and the alerting process, AtHoc IWSAlerts' management system serves as the control center which provides centralized management of all aspects of the emergency notification process. This includes: emergency scenario management, operators' permission management, end-user management and alerts tracking.

AtHoc worked with the Wilford Hall team to help tailor custom alerts for the hospital. Now the Medical Control Center team can create alerts for any type of scenario and determine which personnel should be alerted with instructions for action. The team continues to actively build its library of emergency scenarios for situations ranging from water contamination to pending weather conditions.

In addition to providing the ability for Wilford Hall to alert personnel with information regarding emergencies identified by the base command center, AtHoc IWSAlerts can be configured to pull feeds from numerous data sources, including the Center for Disease Control and the National Weather Service. Wilford Hall can elect to use these feeds to enhance its emergency notification capabilities further in the future.

About AtHoc, Inc.

AtHoc provides enterprise-class, network-centric alerting systems for emergency notifications, force protection readiness, anti-terror warnings and critical communications. AtHoc offers a broad set of alerting solutions for defense and civilian agencies and commercial enterprises, including IWSAlerts(TM) for network-centric emergency notifications; C2Alerts(TM) for targeted user alerts in command and control operations centers; KMAlerts(TM) for knowledge and intelligence dissemination; and EmployeeAlerts(TM) for corporate emergency communications. AtHoc has partnered with Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Unisys and IBM to bring these notification solutions to the enterprise market. The U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Boeing, eBay and Juniper Networks are some of the world-class organizations that have selected and deployed AtHoc for their critical enterprise notification needs.