Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery Standardizes on AtHoc IWSAlerts Across Entire Command
AtHoc awarded contract through BAE Systems to provide centralized emergency notification system to 10,000 personnel, with future deployments reaching all BUMED personnel.
Burlingame, CA (PRWEB) June 23, 2008
AtHoc, Inc., the pioneer and leader in network-centric emergency notification systems (http://www. athoc. com/products/IWSAlerts_overview. aspx), today announced the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) has selected AtHoc IWSAlerts™ to meet the emergency notification needs of the entire command. AtHoc IWSAlerts will be the command's standard for emergency notification, supporting all personnel. The AtHoc emergency notification system will be deployed in phases, and the first contract to begin the roll out was awarded to BAE Systems, covering deployments at Navy Medical Center, San Diego, Ca. and Navy Medical Center, Portsmouth, Va.
BUMED provides high quality healthcare services to 700,000 active duty Navy and Marine Corps members and to 2.6 million retired and family members. The first two deployments will reach 10,000 BUMED personnel, keeping them informed of emergency situations that impact safety and facility security.
BUMED is taking a command-wide approach to emergency alerting and management. It will use a centralized AtHoc IWSAlerts installation to support all of BUMED. Once the system is fully deployed, individual BUMED installations will be able to alert personnel about installation-specific emergencies, and in addition, command headquarters will be able to alert all installations simultaneously when an emergency impacts the entire command.
BUMED will be able to alert personnel via computers, mobile devices and telephones, all from a single, Web-based console. Emergency operators can log into the password-protected site, select a preconfigured emergency scenario, tailor it or create a scenario from scratch, then send out a consistent alert through all alerting channels. Alerts can reach all personnel through redundant channels within minutes. The system also provides a feedback mechanism, allowing the command to track alert acknowledgements and responses from recipients.
AtHoc IWSAlerts supports military-grade security requirements. It has received certification for the Defense Information Technology Security Certification and Accreditation Process (DITSCAP) and it can be integrated with Common Access Cards (CAC). It also dramatically improves the process of keeping alerting contact lists updated by integrating directly with Active Directory and other user repositories to ensure contact information is kept current.
Once the first installation of AtHoc IWSAlerts is complete, the command will be able to easily expand the system to other hospitals and branches. According to Andy Anderson, AtHoc's vice president of defense sector operations, "By implementing a command-wide alerting standard and deploying it centrally, BUMED will realize major benefits. It will be significantly faster to deploy the system across the command, it will be much easier to manage a single system versus multiple independent systems, and they can deploy standard security protocols. In addition, emergency operators can share best practices from one installation to the next."
The BUMED contract represents continued expansion in two key markets for AtHoc: the U. S. Navy and military healthcare. AtHoc IWSAlerts is already being deployed across four of the Navy's regional operations centers, which will ultimately result in four hundred thousand Navy users having access to the system. In military healthcare, AtHoc provides emergency alerting for organizations such as Wilford Hall Medical Center, the Air Force's largest medical facility.
AtHoc IWSAlerts is certified to work on the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI).
About AtHoc
AtHoc is a recognized leader in providing enterprise-class, network-centric emergency notification systems to military, government and commercial organizations for physical security, force protection and personnel accountability. Millions of end users worldwide, in organizations such as the U. S. Air Force, U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, Hawaii State Civil Defense, U. S. Patent and Trademark Office, Boeing, PricewaterhouseCoopers and eBay rely on AtHoc's unified management systems for their emergency alerting and critical communication needs. AtHoc has partnered with market leaders including Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Cisco, Siemens, Avaya, Unisys and others to bring these notification solutions to the public and commercial markets.
For more information on AtHoc, please visit http://www. athoc. com (http://www. athoc. com).
###
