RA’ANANA, Israel — NICE Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ: NICE), the global provider of advanced solutions that enable organizations to extract Insight from Interactions to drive performance, today announced that the British Columbia Ambulance Service (BCAS), the sole ambulance service and provider of pre-hospital emergency care in the Province of British Columbia, Canada, has selected NICE Inform and other NICE solutions to capture and manage emergency communications at all of the BCAS emergency dispatch sites, upgrading from an existing implementation of NICE recording technology. The solutions will be used to capture and retain communications for immediate emergency call playback and post-call investigations and analysis, in order to further improve service and response time.
The British Columbia Ambulance Service is one of the largest Emergency Medical Services (EMS) services providers in North America, serving 4.3 million people in the Province’s near one million-square kilometer area. BCAS’s fast-paced emergency call centers operate 24/7 and are the first point of contact for citizens in British Columbia who require emergency pre-hospital care. BCAS handles more than a half-million calls for service annually, from four dispatch/communications centers based in Kamloops, Vancouver and Victoria. BCAS is also a major provider of inter-facility patient transfer service.
“When we looked at the existing systems in the market, it was clear that NICE was a leader in the industry. The leading-edge technology and consulting services were most impressive and crucial to us as we operate in a very complex networking environment,” said Maurice Girard, Director, IT and Telecommunications, Emergency & Health Services Commission, BC Ambulance Service. “We’re also planning to add Voice over IP in the future and NICE offered a clear and seamless migration path to capture these and other Next Gen 9-1-1 communications.”
Furthermore, BCAS has a unique relationship with E-Comm (Emergency Communications for Southwest British Columbia Incorporated), the primary 9-1-1 answering point for all of Southwestern British Columbia and a NICE recording system customer for close to a decade. BCAS and E-Comm had already standardized on the same radio network and telephone platform and BCAS’s transition to the new NICE recording technology will now ensure additional interoperability, enabling the two agencies to more readily function as backup centers for each other in emergency situations.
“British Columbia Ambulance Service is notably one of the most recognized and progressive emergency medical service providers in North America,” said Chris Wooten, President, Security Division Americas, NICE. “NICE is pleased to be able to provide NICE Inform and other NICE solutions to help BCAS continue its tradition of EMS excellence.”
NICE Inform is the world’s first full-spectrum multimedia incident information management solution for the security market. It provides ground-breaking capabilities for effectively managing incident information from various sources, including audio, video, text and data, streamlining information-sharing, investigations and evidence delivery. The capabilities of NICE Inform also enable agencies and command and control centers to move beyond simply capturing voice communications to centrally capturing and managing many different types of multimedia information central to investigations, such as video, mug shots, affidavits and incident reports. The unique comprehensive capabilities of NICE Inform can be tailored to the specific needs of command and control centers for first responders and homeland security, transportation, government, and private sector organizations, and deliver improved collaboration and operational efficiency to enhance safety and security.
NICE Systems will be demonstrating NICE Inform and other NICE public safety solutions in booth #108 at the upcoming NENA 2009 Conference and Tradeshow taking place June 6 through June 11, 2009 in Fort Worth, Texas.
About British Columbia Ambulance Service (BCAS)
Founded in 1974 and operated under the auspices of the Emergency and Health Services Commission (EHSC), the British Columbia Ambulance Service (BCAS) is the sole ambulance service and provider of pre-hospital emergency care in the Province of British Columbia, Canada, and is one of the largest Emergency Medical Services (EMS) services in North America. The BCAS also provides inter-facility patient transfer services in circumstances where a patient needs to be moved between health care facilities. The BCAS has a fleet of over 450 ground ambulances operating from 190 stations across the province. In addition, BCAS operates an airevac program that utilizes both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft. One of only two paramedic units of its kind in the world, the BCAS Infant Transport Team (ITT) provides emergency medical care to BC pediatric, neo-natal and high-risk obstetrics patients. BCAS operates four dispatch/communications centers, including three regional centers based in Kamloops, Vancouver and Victoria from which ambulances are deployed, and the Provincial Air Ambulance Coordination Center located in Victoria, which manages all responses requiring air ambulance transport. These fast-paced call centers operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are the first point of contact for people requiring emergency pre-hospital care. More information at http://www.bcas.ca/.
About NICE
NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) is the leading provider of Insight from Interactions solutions and value-added services, powered by advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content — from telephone, web, radio and video communications. NICE’s solutions address the needs of the enterprise and security markets, enabling organizations to operate in an insightful and proactive manner, and take immediate action to improve business and operational performance and ensure safety and security. NICE has over 24,000 customers in more than 150 countries, including more than 85 of the Fortune 100 companies. More information is available at www.nice.com.