Telematics Spurs Change In Emergency Dispatch Protocols

ATX, IAED Agree to Begin Using Telematics Collision Data for Dispatch Priority

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Feb. 6, 2006 — The International Academies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED) and ATX Group, the world's second largest telematics service provider to the automotive industry, agreed today to begin the process of incorporating the automatic collision data generated by telematics-equipped vehicles into IAED's emergency dispatch priority protocols in both North America and Europe.

"We want to take a major step in a systematic process to use the potential crash severity data from telematics service providers such as ATX to enhance and accelerate the emergency response to that automobile collision," said Scott Freitag, President of IAED, based here.

Specifically, IAED will determine how to integrate such post-collision data points as vehicle rollover detection, direction of impact (ie. head-on, side, rear-end), and the delta velocity of impact into their dispatch protocol software used by many emergency dispatch centers to determine the priority and type of emergency response dispatched to an accident scene. ATX receives nearly 6,000 automatic collision notifications a year from telematics-equipped vehicles produced by several different vehicle manufacturers. Using GPS satellite receivers embedded in telematics vehicles, these collision notifications, triggered by air bag deployment and/or emergency pre-tensioning restraint activation, arrive at ATX with the vehicle's specific location and heading, enabling ATX to begin helping direct local emergency responders to the exact location of the collision immediately after the collision has occurred. By providing additional collision data heretofore not provided, ATX can now assist emergency responders in determining the potential severity of the collision, the priority of response, and perhaps the type of response, such as whether extrication equipment, advanced medical response or air flight medical response needs to be dispatched immediately rather than waiting until after first responders arrive at the scene.

"Obviously there's still a lot of study and field research that emergency response professionals need to conduct to refine the correlation between collision data and response but both IAED and ATX felt it was critical to begin attempting to use the data now and perhaps make a difference in emergency response and patient outcome," said Gary Wallace, ATX Vice President of Corporate Relations. "This will be an evolving, methodical process because the alternative is to simply convey a lot of data to emergency call takers without any context as to its potential relevance and thereby potentially lengthening the time spent on the phone with the emergency dispatcher."

IAED plans to test their revised protocols in a pilot project involving emergency dispatch centers in at least two large cities.

The International Academies of Emergency Dispatch was created in 1988 as the National Academy of Emergency Medical Dispatch as a standard-setting organization for the field of emergency dispatch (specifically medical dispatching). Comprising an academic organization of top experts in their fields, the NAEMD over the years became a strong and authoritative voice for emergency medical dispatch (EMD) programs worldwide. In 2000, the IAED was expanded to take on the additional responsibilities of newly created fire rescue and police protocols, bringing the same quality of service and experience to those fields of dispatching as well. The Academy now has become the Academies, an organization made up of three distinct Academies for Medical, Fire, and Police standards, each governing their appropriate disciplines on an international front.

ATX Group serves markets in both North America and Western Europe. The company's telematics services are provided through the two-way communication of voice and data between a subscriber's telematics-equipped automobile and ATX response and data centers.