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monitors, which typically carry a marketing message via the desktop notification as well.
Testing in Real Time
The system has been tested in real events time and time again, including in November 2015 during a “Shots-Fired event.” Shots were fired nearby causing the hospital to go into lock- down. It was activated and hundreds of hos- pital occupants were alerted to the situation. After the event, Anderson was able to run a report to see how many people they reached and used the incident as an opportunity to re- fine their emergency response protocols.
“With our existing and prior communica- tion mediums we could never evaluate how many people we have touched,” he said. “It was more of a guess.”
During a tornado event in 2015, the sys- tem’s capability to send targeted, customized messages proved invaluable. The hospital received two different weather warnings: An “Imminent Warning” for the Shawnee Mis- sion Medical Center location and a “Null Warning” for the Shawnee Mission Health Prairie Star location in nearby Lenexa, Kan- sas. The alert notifications required different actions, and through the system, they were able to notify personnel at the Lenexa loca- tion that patients did not need to be moved while simultaneously notifying the Shawnee Mission Medical Center campus that pa- tients did need to be moved.
Fulfilling Critical Gaps
Shawnee Mission Medical Center and Ander- son were able to fulfill critical gaps in Shawnee Mission Medical Center and Shawnee Mission Health’s communications by implementing the desktop alert notification and Alert Beacons. As he continues to work toward fully integrat- ing the hospital’s mass communication efforts, Anderson plans to leverage the system’s inte- gration capabilities to tai-
lor his mass notification strategy to fit the hospi- tal’s unique needs.
Greg Smith is the pub- lic relations manager at Alertus Technologies.
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