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.

Although we manufacture both models, the phone version represents approximately 80% of our sales of telephone based products because customers prefer the benefits of an all-in one solution by comparison with the limited facilities of a similarly priced Dialler. The Dialler does however play an important role under certain circumstances as mentioned below.
- Why pay for, and interconnect two or three separate devices when the total facility including phone, dialler and security system can be contained within one simple to operate telephone instrument.

- The phone version has many built-in facilities to assist persons with hearing loss including loud sounding ringer, handset volume control and user accessible two-way loud-speaking speakerphone facility, in addition to hearing aid induction handset.

- The phone also helps those with sight impairment or finger dexterity by having big buttons for both keypad dialling and 'photofit' picture memory speed dialing buttons. It will even announce the time and day of the week via a simple button press technique.

- The phone allows you to more easily answer and hang-up the phone by the use of your wireless pendant.

- The phone model is also a highly featured and easy to use home security system. This is because the phone model has a keypad, which allows the user to enter a PIN to switch between the phone's “home” and ”Away” modes.

- In summary, the phone is an 'all in one' communication instrument that is in general use on a day -to-day basis and has the ability to largely counteract the various frailties of a typical aged person such as sight, hearing and mobility loss.

- By comparison, however, the Dialler is ideal for rental applications where emergency-call via help button or pendant is the prime requirement and it also allows matters of hygiene to be better controlled amongst multiple users. This is the prime important benefit

Not so.
- Our dialler is designed to sit under the telephone where it only slightly exceeds the foot print of the existing phone. Elderly frail people would prefer such aids to be as inconspicuous as possible

- Upright dialler designs, in addition to requiring their own desk space are also more unstable and inclined to fall.

- They also require separate cabling to the wall power socket, the wall telephone socket and the telephone handset – it's messy.

- Our 'flat-profile' Dialler is also better suited for wall mounting if preferred.

That's a very important question because Standard AS4607 entitled “Personal Response Systems” specifically applies. It more or less replaced Standard AS2999 “Alarm systems for the aged and other persons at risk”.

We certainly comply, in fact this company's CEO was a member of the Standards committee that created that and other allied Standards. Beware of products that do no comply.

Yes, it comes under the classification of 'Medical Alerting Systems' and is free of GST so make sure that you do not pay GST, because unlike registered companies you will not be able to recover your GST payment. If you deal with genuine suppliers of aged care goods and services they will know the rules.

Yes you can and if you are using the HD4 Smart-Dialler you must of course also have a separate phone. If using the HP3 Emergency-Call phone there is no need for additional phones unless you wish so. You should be aware, however, that Telstra allow you to have up to 3 good quality phones or other approved devices on your line. Look under your phones and other connected equipment and if you See REN= 1 then you know its top quality performance (as are Smart-Caller units).

The important issue is to ensure that the emergency-call phone or dialler will be able to seize the line when you press an emergency button. We discuss this matter in another FAQ question.

Yes we certainly do, in fact we have a number of solutions. The best solution is to use a professional monitoring centre. They will contact family and if not available they will dispatch an ambulance if considered necessary having attempted to talk to the client. Secondly we have included up to 8 dial-up numbers in both the Smart phone and dialer the last of which could be the Emergency 000 service. They will simply send an ambulance to the address showing on their computer screen.

When programmed to call a public domain or retirement village monitoring centre we have introduced our unique 'Integrity Call-Back' facility. This can be programmed to dial alternative destinations along with outgoing announcement should the monitoring centre operator not have responded to the alarm call within a certain (programmable) interval.

This is a highly predictable situation and there are a number of options. The telephone line is the only available solution; however, aged care needs change with time and longer term solutions should also be considered. The HP3 phone is the logical instrument designed specifically for that role. It will even act as a domestic security system when Mum is staying with friends or family or is in Hospital.

Family monitoring sounds good and can be effective, particularly if you place the Emergency [000] Service as the last resort destination. However, you will be surprised how little it costs to use professional 24/7 monitoring and when shared amongst the siblings it is usually a negligible but valuable investment.

We can assist you in providing contact details with those monitoring centres that provide the best value for money professional service.

If you opt for family monitoring make sure that you purchase a product like ours that can be reprogrammed to provide professional monitoring because that usually becomes the preferred choice in due course. Our HP3 Smart Phone and HD4 Smart Dialler are designed to be programmed for either operating mode thereby providing future options.

If you are using your HP3 Phone or HD4 Dialler and someone presses an emergency button the active call will be disconnected and the emergency call will then proceed. However, unless the handset is replaced an incoming return response call would not be received as the line is busy at the local telephone exchange.

A more serious possibility is if another phone or your computer has engaged the telephone line when a button is triggered. In this case the call will not get to its destination unless you have ensured that the Smart Phone/Dialler' connection to the wall has been modified to be a [mode 5] (line seize) connection.

To assist in overcoming this problem the Smart phone or dialler will make regular announcements that you have a phone off-hook which is helpful.

For a temporary installation it is also possible to use one of our Electronic Line Disconnect (ELD) units plugged into each of the other occupied telephone sockets and the ELD unit will electronically disconnect anything (other than the emergency device) that happens to be connected during the emergency call.

This is an ideal solution for rental installations where the cost of installing and uninstalling special line socket wiring is a significant unrecoverable and inconvenient expense.

No problem, because the HP3 phone and HD4 Dialler have battery back-up to in excess of 70 hours. The Australian Standard specifies no less than 40 hours back-up.

We also use modern NiMH batteries that have in excess of 5 years battery life and the Phone/Dialler will send a message to the monitoring centre if the battery needs to be replaced.

Meanwhile, during a power fail condition, the help light is extinguished (which is very obvious) and if the unit is being professionally monitored it will (after a preset time) send a power-fail message to the monitoring centre and will send a corresponding power restoral message once power is restored.

Firstly we feel sure that you recognize that the telephone line is highly reliable. The telephone line (and normal analogue PABX extension) is claimed to have 'five nines' reliability, meaning 99.999% reliability.

In any case the phone and dialler are programmed to make a regular voice announcement to you (the user) to advise of such a problem. In order not to scare you they do not make the announcements at night.

It can only recognize the lack of a line connection and cannot detect other forms of exchange problems.

Yes we have such a facility. We believe that (particularly in moments of stress or pain) its best for our products to talk to the client and a large percentage of the elder clients either do not speak English or have reverted to their original language. This includes the various reminders such as taking medication etc. To further enhance this feature we can offer some choice of alternate languages such as Italian and Mandarin and no doubt other languages will be included in due course.

You should enquire prior to purchasing as some products are not yet able to accommodate the alternative language option.

Yes both our Smart Phone and Dialler each have the ability to make repetitive announcements at certain times of the day to remind Dad to take his medication. The loud voice announcement asks him to “Press the Cancel button if he has taken the pills”. If he does not respond within a certain (programmable) period the Phone/Dialler will deliver a 'Medication' announcement to the programmed destination/s to then also allow instant voice to voice contact.

Note the HD4 Dialler has multiple pill time option whereas the HP3 phone has only one time slot which will be adjusted at the time of the HP4 release.

We are currently evaluating a 30 day automatic pill dispenser that will open a small draw at certain times of the day into which the correct pill allocation has previously been placed. This would interact with the Smart Phone/Dialler to ensure pill delivery confirmation.

The general answer to this regular question is 100 Meters in free space. However, it is not that simple because buildings and physical obstructions will significantly reduce that range in practice.

The maximum range is set by Government regulation which determines the allowable transmitted power. It is therefore important to carry out what is known as a 'walk test' whereby the phone or dialer will give a loud audio response to button presses as you walk around your property.

Where you have a location out of range such as a Granny Flat or the husband's workshop, you can purchase a range extender unit that will more than double the original range.

Like most of these features, we introduced this 'Inactivity' facility to the market many years ago in previous generations of product. Using one of our wireless passive infrared sensors and setting the phone/dialler's 'Inactivity Time Window' the Smart Phone/Dialler will commence to make announcements at the closing time of the 'Inactivity Window' and will subsequently send an 'Inactivity' alert call to programmed destination/s if the client does not respond.

Each product uses a highly accurate internal crystal controlled calendar clock. It even recognizes leap year and you can program the daylight saving adjustments to suit your time zone location.

Note. The daylight saving facility is currently limited to the HD4 Dialler but will be included in the next (HP4) version phone.

Although we have pendant and wrist strap transmitters that do not have replaceable batteries we also have pendants and other sensor devices that do allow users to replace the battery.

It should be noted however, that a low battery in these devices does cause the Smart-Phone and Dialler to make the announcement “the device you are using needs a new battery” and it takes typically 5 or more years to reach that condition. There is some choice in this matter.

As a matter of general interest the Smart-Caller manufactured pendants even have a luminescent button that glow's in the dark.

In addition to your Dad being able to press his wireless pendant to call for help he can also use it to accept and hang-up incoming phone calls in two-way loud-speaking mode.

We also have a range of bed and chair exit sensors that will similarly trigger your Smart HP3 phone or HD4 Dialler in those circumstances. These can be programmed to sound a local alarm during the night to alert the family or to ring family member's mobile phone/s (or a monitoring centre) during the day acting as a constant companion for all occasions.

As we release this, our 30th anniversary web site, we are also busy releasing a new range of emergency-call products suitable for Broadband and wireless GSM interconnection using the national ADSL and GSM infrastructures.

No, everything is preprogrammed to suit normal requirements; it's called the default table. All you would normally have to do is to enter the dial-up destination/s and make sure that the wireless pendant is programmed.

If you are using a professional monitoring centre they would simply dial-in and program and test the unit using the remote programming facilities.

They sure do. With the help of the easy to access 'Home' and 'Away' or to use professional jargon 'Arm and disarm' features both the HP3 Phone and HD4 Dialler function as highly effective home security systems for professional monitoring or self or family monitoring. In addition to being able to detect smoke detector alerts, it is possible to monitor your home from your mobile phone. You can even talk to the intruder with interesting results. You will know that it is an intruder because your mobile phone identifies the type of alarm before you accept the call with a single digit code.

It accommodates all of the requirements of a home security system other than having a tamper switch and a zone isolation display which we felt was not in keeping with the objectives of providing a special telephone for aged persons.

You can even decide to dispatch security calls to a central monitoring company if you do not want to receive such calls on your mobile phone.

These are four quite different technologies and we will summarize their respective pros and cons as follows:-

- Hard-wired: Highest level of operating reliability and lowest level of future flexibility,
- Wireless: Maximum level of flexibility and lowest level of operating reliability,
- IP Based: Needs a back-up facility but offers the highest level of overall system integration,
- Telephone: High reliability and high flexibility but comparatively slow and subject to congestion.


This series of FAQ questions and answers will cover each of these systems; however, an overview of the comparisons would suggest that a system that exploited the benefits of most or all of these technologies would make for an extremely interesting and leading edge nurse-call facility.

I believe that this company is the only one that specializes in all of these technologies and we have a large user base to prove how we integrate these technologies for best outcomes.

Let's take a few simple and inexpensive but extremely important examples of increasing the effectiveness of a traditional hard-wired system solely by using wireless overlay techniques.

- Our bedside call-point can include an integral wireless receiver that allows remote trigger from a wireless pendant, an out-of bed or bed wet sensor or similar accessories that may be required resident by resident from time to time. The wireless device can trigger that call-point's prime circuit or may be given a second circuit also available in each of our call-points.
- Our communal area call-points can include an integral wireless receiver programmed to accept any resident pendant call within that location. This has a lot of practical uses.
- It is possible to simply plug-in 100-channel wireless receivers into each hard-wired area controller to form a site-wide wireless Safe-T-Net infrastructure with itemized database identification and real time location capability. It costs about $200.00 to include a 100 channel wireless overlay – it's crazy not to exploit such a low cost valuable add-on.

We deliver many wireless or hardwired computer-less systems for a variety of uses. The two popular wireless systems are called Radiant-100 and Radiant-200 being 100 and 200 wireless call-point systems respectively.

Where a hard-wired solution is preferred we offer the SmartCare-100 which will easily accommodate up to 100 hard-wired call-points or other devices star wired back to the equipment cabinet which we usually supply as a totally installed and programmed system.

In keeping with our overall philosophy it is also possible to mix the wireless and hard-wired inputs within a single system located in a single wall mounting cabinet.

Both systems use canned alphanumeric messages which may be paged to normal pagers and/or to Annunciator displays where various level so priority display are also available.

There are many subtle and not so subtle differences. Let's summarize some notable issues.

- Firstly we offer wireless overlay both within each room and throughout the site and the additional costs are negligible.
- We like to maintain a 'home like environment' and not simulate a Boeing cockpit where some competitor equipped rooms have Call-Cancel, Staff Assist-Cancel and even Emergency call-points all in a row. Our bedside two-button call-point in addition to having an internal wireless receiver option and dual circuit capability also incorporates the 'Staff Assist' facility. This is achieved simply by the staff member pressing both buttons simultaneously which will then initiate or will upgrade an existing resident call to the 'Assist' call priority.

Having a separate Staff Assist call-point available to the resident merely costs more and encourages the resident to press the 'rapid response' button that goes to the high priority paging group.

- Each of our call-points (in fact any connected device) can be given a revised level of priority at the touch of a key under password via the computer keyboard. No need to take the call-point off the wall and reset the dip-switches in order to temporarily raise the level of priority for perhaps a sick or recuperating resident.
- Our head end host computer is a new miniature solid state rugged industrial version with the latest flash memory techniques (no moving parts). Operating from 12V DC central equipment battery backed power source it does not require a troublesome UPS and overall provides the ultimate in system reliability. It costs no more than a traditional low cost PC with UPS and, as a guide to its reliability, it is even used by NASA and the Military.
- Our Network Supervisor Unit (NSU) remembers the computer data-base entry for each call-point etc. and will continue to deliver the full alphanumeric paging text message should the computer fail.
- There are many more differences between the Smart-Caller SmartCare-1000 hard-wired nurse-call system and others on offer as this list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) will identify.

Yes we do. With our own existing hard-wired systems this can be achieved quickly and inexpensively as we have long since planned for such a logical hard-wired upgrade path.

With third party systems we are inclined not to touch those existing systems in any way because if things go wrong down the track the suppliers would be inclined to point fingers at each other and that is not acceptable to the site operator.

Accordingly during the course of 2010 will be releasing our latest new semi portable product called 'Demrad' which will capture and process all required information from a dementia resident's room and deliver it via the choice of various of our techniques to the head end location. It can then be paged directly to the site's pagers or be equipped with our computer based complete head-end at which time we would also offer to bring the total system into one modern computer based head-end terminal.

We totally agree because we have the burden of providing 24/7 2-hour response service to our customer base and there is nothing worse than the company having to pay staff to be on standby or for that staff to receive a 2am service call-out from one of our sites that may be perhaps 3 or 4 hours away.

Accordingly we consider nurse-call system reliability to be the prime design objective and we are continually striving to identify and 'work around' system 'weak-links'. These have proven to be:-

1. Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS)
2. Computers (moving parts)
3. Lightning strikes.

As clients are not keen to enter into maintenance contracts the first two of these items result in failures that are guaranteed to occur in the fullness of time also incurring avoidable costs.

We now overcome these computer related problems by supplying a new and highly reliable solid state computer which has no moving parts and operates from the central equipment 12v dc power source thereby totally removing the need for a UPS and its battery back-up cabinet.

Further, we now install a Network Supervisor Unit (NSU) which will allow the system to continue to deliver paging and Annunciator display traffic even in the event of host computer failure.

We are targeting a zero after-hours call-out rate and already getting close to that objective.

Yes, we note that some of our competitors are giving 'lip service' to the use of the 'IP' but they continue to use the highly reliable RS485 polling techniques. Clause 2 of Standard AS3811 gives warning about the use of merging nurse-call dependency into other data networks and we fully agree with this observation.

We are, however, planning to release an IP-based nurse-call system with some terrific functionality including wireless interconnect with 'person-down' detection, duress etc. later this year. Yes, it will be configured to be both reliable and compliant with Standard AS3811 Standard. In this respect reliability is assured by the optional redundancy facility that will take-over the operation should the 'system watchdog' facility detect a problem.

Information will be released during April 2010 and the product will be ready for market during the third quarter 2010.

You will find within this web site a catalogue of all such available devices along with illustrations, descriptive comment and indicative prices. If you cannot find what you are looking for contact us because we can probably assist.

We agree the system should have adequate automatic diagnostics to detect and report a faulty connection to the system.

In answer to your question every active device that is connected to the nurse-call system delivers a 'heartbeat' pulse to its parent area controller each 60 seconds. It does not end there, each area controller is also being constantly polled by the master controller.

As a result, a 'Trouble Report' is generated and repeated at regular intervals should any active part of the system fail to communicate at any time.

When you add these precautions along with the main system watchdog and automatic back-up facilities you can be assured that any problem will be immediately identified along with the location of the problem.

The outcomes of our Winwatch monitoring software package are too comprehensive to discuss in this FAQ questionnaire. In short it will provide the following information and is constantly being added to as required by the healthcare professionals:-

- Log of all traffic and response times per resident, room, ward, or total for selected period,
- Overview of behavior pattern for each dementia and incontinent residents,
- Distribution of call traffic to DECT phones, Paging, GSM Annunciators and similar,
- Ability to send manual, automatic or pre-programmed selective or group messages,
- Incontinence management module - option'
- RFID asset tracking alerting facilities with audit trail management of persons and assets,
- Remote central consolidation of site performance and care plan management,
- Other attributes – Ask for a soft copy of the handbook for detailed evaluation.