STEPS on board for Royal Berkshire Ambulance NHS Trust

01/12/2006

Royal Berkshire Ambulance NHS Trust, the first Ambulance Service in the UK to install Transportable Satellite Broadband VPN (TSBV) technology has achieved another first with the acquisition of STEPS (Strategic Emergency Planning Solution) form Cardiff-based Excelerate Technology and its technology partners Imass.

STEPS is a system which allows personnel from all three Emergency Services the ability to immediately update emergency plans in pressurised situations – such as major disasters or terrorist attacks. It uses Excelerate’s wireless mesh technology and delivers a solution to a multi-agency response as far as planning and procedure is concerned.

STEPS enables organisations to create plans that deal with various levels of emergency. These plans, created and stored within STEPS, provide valuable information in support to responses to incidents, and can be generated in such a way as to include and integrate multi-agency response details that may be required to resolve a crisis.

Additionally, real-time remote viewing of STEPS is achieved through Excelerate’s on-board satellite broadband solution to keep every level of the command structure informed wherever they are.
 
Royal Berkshire Ambulance NHS Trust is the first Ambulance Trust in the UK to install STEPS. James Amos, Emergency Planning Officer for Royal Berkshire Ambulance NHS Trust said: “It is vital for us, as an Ambulance Trust that covers such a wide and diverse area, that we equip ourselves with technology that will aid us in our emergency management and multi-agency response procedures. This is why we have again gone to Excelerate and its solution, STEPS.
 

“Although the product seemed perfect, we requested that the solution have a few more options, they went away and came back with an improved product that will benefit us for now and others that take the system from here on in.”

David Savage, Chairman and CEO for Excelerate Technology added: “One of the main attractions of the STEPS solution is its simplicity of use and its automatic update across the Excelerate wireless mesh solution in a multi-agency response.
 
“It will allow Royal Berkshire Ambulance NHS Trust’s crew the ability to update its plans while keeping all involved parties informed. As soon as one plan of action is made, the information is relayed across the wireless mesh and updated on all the whiteboards in the relevant response units.”

For further information on Excelerate and STEPS visit www.excelerate.info