Andi never gave up! NRS Healthcare use Andi to keep North Yorkshire connected.
Andi has been proven to never give up sending an alarm, bringing new hope for superior resilience for technology enabled care services. In a recent pilot across rural reaches of North Yorkshire, Andi delivered a critical alarm after connectivity had been lost entirely.
North Yorkshire Council face significant challenges in the lead up to the analogue to digital transition. Due to large areas of poor network quality in the region, many dispersed alarm units are unable to secure a strong enough mobile connection to reliably deliver alarms to ARCs, cloud platforms or other end points. Rebecca Dukes, Strategic Service Development Manager, at North Yorkshire Council said that “our rural nature, along with the types of construction in older buildings gives us some challenges regarding GSM connections meaning that SIM based digital connections are problematic.”
Since 2018, NRS Healthcare has provided an end-to-end service for North Yorkshire Council and Rebecca Dukes recognises NRS for their support “through the analogue to digital switchover.” Unfortunately, the unstable internet connectivity within the region had led NRS Healthcare to experience some unsuccessful installations of digital Dispersed Alarm Units (DAU’s) prompting NRS to seek out more resilient solutions to keep service users connected and safe.
As champions of innovation, NRS have been working with ITEC innovation Award winners 2iC-Care to review where the interoperable and data-led solution, Andi, could help local authorities to solve some of the challenges of analogue to digital.
Andi is a dispersed alarm unit with a difference. Each Andi hub holds within it market leading distributed IoT software which can connect to multiple peripheral types from many manufacturers. The solution has been proven to enable proactive care to avoid preventable hospital admissions, but Andi also enables superior resilience via Andi’s sophisticated software and the Lean Services protocol. As part of their commitment to helping North Yorkshire to both innovate their service and solve the connectivity challenge, NRS installed Andi in homes with poor or varying mobile network connectivity.
About the Pilot.
“North Yorkshire is a large rural county with geographical challenges for the GSM signals required for digital solution... We identified a number of users who were happy to take part in the pilot, some had poor GSM signal and others were where we could identify interoperability with their environmental sensors.
As part of the pilot 2iC-Care monitored the test calls made on their portal to evidence that Andi was able to make a more reliable connection via GSM where there was a poor signal.
This is exciting for NRS to know that 2iC-Care can provide a resilient solution for North Yorkshire” Joanna Savage, Service and Transformation Manager, NRS
Installation.
Andi was successfully installed into homes where analogue had previously been the only option providing NRS and North Yorkshire Council with confidence at an early stage. However, 17 days later when the poor internet connectivity dropped entirely, the real power of Andi was unveiled.
What happened next?
The Andi hub received an alarm, via RF868, from a Tunstall pendant but there was no mobile connection at all at that time. Andi then sent this alarm to the dashboard as Andi is configured to ‘message retry’ before it recognises that the message is unable to reach the desired end point. Instead of dropping the call whilst there was no internet connectivity, like most DAU’s, Andi smartly stored the alarm and delivered it as soon as a small internet signal was detected. It is the lean services protocol which enables Andi to transit alarms via this minimal bandwidth.
What does this mean for the technology enabled care sector?
When the connection outage occurred, most DAU’s would have lost this message but Andi is configured to never give up sending an alarm or an alert. Therefore, Andi is an exciting technology enabled care (TEC) solution which offers resilience to many local authorities who are struggling with deploying TEC solutions in areas of poor internet network connectivity.
What does this mean for areas with good internet connectivity?
Resilience in technology enabled care is about being prepared for all eventualities. Even in areas where mobile signal is generally good, mobile network connectivity can still fluctuate. This can happen for several reasons such as adverse weather conditions, interference from building materials or terrain, the distance from the nearest cell tower, or the number of users on the network and how those resources are assigned. Therefore, the resilience of a TEC solution should be an important factor during procurement.
What's next?
Andi is the TEC solution of choice for local authorities who want a resilient dispersed alarm unit which can also unlock their preventative care service. With Andi, the door to TEC services remains open for all service users, no matter where they live. 2iC-Care is passionate about helping local authorities deliver more intelligent reactive care and life-changing preventative care. To learn more about how Andi can transform your TEC service, get in touch with the team.