We have several hundred satisfied customers throughout Australia and New Zealand using our systems and those systems have proved to be safe and inexpensive to maintain. This is because they are based on the use of special analogue telephones connected to standard PSTN or PABX analogue lines all of which give a recognized 'five nines' (99.999%) level of reliability.

As we now enter the 'Digital Age' where 'baby boomers' will have great expectations for the latest communications and entertainment facilities it should be noted that 'bundling-in' the emergency-call service will significantly reduce the level of reliability of this essential life saving service. This means that you will have to provide a redundancy (back-up) communication facility along with significant site-wide power back-up resources. This can easily increase the cost of providing this essential service by a factor of 4 or 5 and the cost of ongoing maintenance by even larger factors.

Meanwhile one does recognize the need to accommodate the mandatory digital 'free to air' TV services and perhaps the additional cable and satellite offerings along with large-scale broadband bandwidth across the site.

This is a complex issue beyond the scope of a FAQ item so we refer you to the White Paper article 'Village Resident Risk Management' included in this web site. We can also refer you to experienced system integrators who will assist in providing overall safe and cost effective planning.

In short we design, manufacture and supply emergency call Telephones, Diallers (Known as HP3 Help Phone and HD4 Smart Dialler) along with a wide range of accessories for the Independent Living Units (ILUs). We also supply the special trigger and monitoring requirements for the community centre. In excess of 60,000 of our units have been delivered to the Aged population over the years.

The products installed within the ILUs are identical to those also used within domestic homes therefore you are referred to the Domestic section of the FAQ lists for detailed product descriptions.

Beyond the Village environment we also cater for the aging-in-place aspects and provide hard-wired, wireless and IP systems to accommodate the low care, high care and special care (dementia) facilities. This is all achieved via a single computer platform with full back-up facilities.

Quite the contrary, unlike village systems that use hard-wired or wireless reticulation, the telephone has worldwide communication access so it's simple for the monitoring centre to gain remote access and to program each ILU Smart phone or Dialer to communicate directly with that centre. It is true that your on-site monitoring centre can then be switched off.

For a small fee per ILU the monitoring centre will take over the total monitoring, programming and communication responsibility. Alternatively you can install one of our on-site monitoring terminals designed to communicate with your on-site and/or off-site staff or sub contract carers.

First of all, 'IT' is well named because it's good for the distribution of, and accessing 'Information' this does not make it some utopian solution for the saving of lives. In fact clause 2 of Standard AS3811 'Hard-wired nurse-call systems" clearly makes this point.

Having appeared to 'knock' the technology, we hasten to point out that we don't have our 'head in the sand' because we recognize that the current limitations of digital and IP technology in relation to life saving applications will no doubt be resolved in due course.

Meanwhile we are doing our bit and plan to release fully Standard's compliant IP emergency-call telephone products and IP based nurse-call systems during the course of 2010. Final pre-production samples are already under test.

Having been recognized as the pioneers in emergency-call and nurse-call during the past 20 or so years we are well placed to maintain this reputation. In the matter of 'setting the pace', even our main competitor started life as our agent.

Many developers have been influenced by the multitude of inexperienced IT companies offering so-called leading edge solutions. In consequence some of those suppliers have gone into bankruptcy leaving their clients in turmoil whilst it its alleged that various serious litigation issues also exist.

Yes, Telstra laboratories in Melbourne requested samples of our Emergency-Call equipment along with our on-site monitoring head-end equipment and carried out the necessary end-to-end tests. They connected our Help Phone and Smart Dialler to their EPON ILU terminal and delivered Ademco protocol and voice-to-voice traffic into the on-site monitoring terminal and made auto answer response calls back to the ILU to simulate a normal operating environment. The EPON's ATA section needed some minor adjustments to deliver the standard Aussie ring tone (instead of the American version) to trigger the Phone/Dialler's auto answer, then all worked well.

Tests were also carried via the PSTN to public monitoring centres which formed part of the overall test. Telstra have retained our sample equipment for future reference.

We have similarly carried out similarly satisfactory tests with PBN (Optical Broadband Product Systems). We would however, strongly recommend that the buyer of such FTTH systems beware and to insist on compatibility testing prior to committing to that system solution.

Consideration should also be given to our IP-Carephone solution connecting directly to the ILU Ethernet circuit, that new product being due for release third quarter 2010.

To specifically answer your question, as far as we can see, whilst they are laying Fibre they are also allocating a separate copper overlay being a dedicated pair (or CAT5) for each ILU. It seems that the additional cost is negligible and it gives the developer immediate access to an alternative and reliable communications path for emergency-call, redundancy path for foreseen and unforeseen circumstances including those difficult residents that insist on having a Telstra PSTN connection.

We can put you in touch with people that specialize in designing such systems, particularly in start-up phase.

We also have such equipment but the short answer is that you are operating outside of the Australian Standard AS4067 and consequently there are circumstances where the family of a deceased resident could have good cause to pursue litigation.

From a technical point of view these typically 27Mhz CB band wireless systems went out of fashion some 20 years ago and do not fit within the scope of modern life saving communication systems. Refer to White Paper 'Village Resident Risk Management' for further comment.

At any time we probably have 20 or more village clients in this situation. The solution for the new section of the village is simply a matter of installing Smart HP3 phone or HD4 Diallers as the ILUs become occupied and to have them programmed to communicate with the preferred monitoring solution. It's a good idea, however, to purchase the units in lots of 10 for best price.

With regard to your existing village facilities, we have designed and regularly supply a product that will accept your existing wireless call traffic and will deliver that traffic into the new (as above) on-site monitoring head-end or to an off-site monitoring centre to suit your preference. The cost of this special equipment is minimal.

This allows you to plan a gradual upgrade path without having to establish a capital expenditure budget. Some sites have taken many years to achieve the completion of upgrade; however, it is important to realize that the residents using the old system do not have the benefit of a Standard's compliant facility.

We could also propose this solution but we would consider it to be an expensive recipe for disaster. In fact the company that first introduced this technique did not take our advice and consequently went into liquidation. Other companies are now unfortunately promoting this same flawed technique.

As with wireless or hard-wired (RS485) techniques you will find that the supplier will probably not be prepared to 'sign-off' a certificate of compliance to Standard AS4607.

Further, each of these techniques has its own specific problems and limitations. As far as hard-wired daisy-chain RS485 polling techniques are concerned the first decent 'near lightning strike' would predictably take out the total nurse-call system. By comparison telephone reticulation is an existing, fully maintained and robust alternative with the advantage of providing two-way speech, allowing compliance with relevant Standards and further allowing future off-site monitoring options. Refer to White Paper 'Village Resident Risk Management'.

We provide a unique facility in our HP3 Phone and HD4 Dialler whereby it recognizes the fact that that no one has responded within [X] (programmable) minutes and it will then escalate a call to another destination delivering a voice announcement and opening the two-way speech facility, and/or using other protocols. It can even escalate to 8 different destinations until answered. The call of last resort could for example be the emergency-call [000] service.

A popular alternative solution is to hand the monitoring over to a professional monitoring centre where they take that duty of care responsibility for a fee. This is worth looking into because that fee could well be less than your costs to provide your own monitoring terminal and staff.

Apart from the escalation features of each ILU phone/dialler, the on-site monitoring terminal can similarly make multiple escalation calls using SMS text messages via landline or GSM.

Either way duty of care obligations are as 'failsafe' as technology will allow.

Firstly we pioneered the technique in Australia as far back as 1989 and secondly, as strange as it may seem, we are still the only supplier offering a Standard's compliant telephone solution.

Others promote low cost big button domestic phones that do not meet the Standards whereas products that are Standard's compliant are limited to being Diallers which compete with our Dialler and designed to suit rental markets but do not match the functionality of the 'all-in-one' HP3 telephone.

This always encompasses the community centre building with its library, games room, Arts and Crafts room, TV viewing room, spa and swimming pool and should also extend to the external facilities including the bowling green and rose garden. We even monitor call-points located on each tee of a village 9-hole golf course.

The design techniques are slightly different between a village employing its own carer staff with its on-site monitoring centre and those sites that have opted for off-site professional monitoring.

With on-site monitoring we generally use hard-wired call-points terminating in the monitoring terminal central equipment whereas, when the village is using off-site monitoring we usually place some wall-mounted Diallers in strategic locations and fit-off either hard-wired or wireless call-points taught into those diallers.

This also allows the off-site operator or carer to have two-way speech with the distressed resident. It is even possible to allow residents to carry and use their personal pendants within the Community Centre and elsewhere, however, one must be careful to ensure that adequate wireless coverage is provided before encouraging extended use of pendants as residents can even believe that they will work from the shopping center down the road.

Unlike traditional nurse-call or IT system service issues, front line maintenance is limited to plugging in a spare phone or dialler and to give it the same identity as its predecessor. Anyone can carry out this simple task and there is no need to seek outside help. Expensive service call-outs are almost entirely avoided, particularly when using off-site monitoring.

In the matter of maintenance this sums up the difference between using system specific telephone technology and the use of IT, wireless, hard-wired and other possible solutions because the Standard AS4607 clearly specifies all of these parameters and therefore sets the pace for such matters as battery management, pendant battery life and transmitter operating range, power fail and restoral reporting and so on.

As the HP3 Smart phone and HD4 Smart Dialler are also used for domestic emergency-call applications you should refer to the 'FAQ Domestic' section for detailed information of this nature.

Firstly we now use a small robust solid state industrial grade monitoring centre computer that has no moving parts and operates from the central equipment 12v dc battery backed power supply. This also means that we are not dependent on computer cooling fans, hard drives, and the predictable failure of UPS units. Our SmartCom-01 computer is also used by NASA and the military so it's reliable and, as you will discover, is surprisingly inexpensive. In fact it costs about the same as a normal PC plus its UPS arrangements.

More importantly the problem of failing to deliver emergency calls is 'nipped in the bud' by the Smart Phone and Dialler being able to detect a failed telephone line at the destination or a head-end computer problem which causes the calling device to automatically divert the calls to alternative destinations such as mobile phones etc. In these circumstances normal two-way voice-to-voice communication is provided and the service is unaffected other than failing to log calls in the computer log file.

This is also a problem that occurs in the public domain and is therefore covered in our FAQ Domestic section.

In summary the HP3 phone (in particular) and the HD4 Dialler (to a slightly lesser extent) each have excellent and easy to operate home security and Duress functions.

Some call this 'Telemed' being medical support via the telephone line. For each of our HP3 phones and HD4 Diallers we provide a total of 48 identifiable wireless inputs and can include 9 similarly identifiable hard-wired inputs/outputs. This gives us significant scope to carry out home automation, medical appliance monitoring and response functions via analogue devices.

It does not end there, under the auspice of the international Healthcare organization 'Continua agency Group'; all medical appliances now being designed and manufactured throughout the world for 'Telemed' applications must now use the Continua specified bluetooth protocol for short haul communication and Zigg-Bee protocol for longer range communication.

Although only announced by Continua during mid 2009 we are already implementing this interconnection into our new release products including our new IP-CarePhone unit.

Other available solutions include 'person down', bed exit, chair exit and bed-wet sensors plus resident wandering, epileptic fit detection, inactivity monitoring and so on. Our catalogue is bristling with such aged-care supportive devices.

Again, we pioneered these extra service aspects and we suggest that village management propose to prospective residents that all incidents other than medical emergency call traffic are directed to the family with or without village involvement. As typical examples, intrusion calls are sent directly to the holidaying resident's mobile phone to allow direct voice-to-voice contact, or to their family if in hospital. Perhaps medication warning calls go initially to a daughter, again with direct voice-to-voice contact and so on.

The village can limit its involvement by perhaps being included in the list of destinations but having no obligation to attend.

Our new IP-CarePhone takes this Telemed facility, including home automation to a whole new level whereby it can provide continuous on-line information via its Bluetooth input outputting required information via its Ethernet connection.