"I would recommend BlackBerry AtHoc over any other service. The usability of it and the way it's accessible everywhere across the country is fantastic. And the support from BlackBerry is also excellent — every time I contact them, they're back to me in minutes."
— Josh McKenna, Emergency Planning Support Officer, Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust
The Northern Care Alliance NHS FT is one of the largest NHS providers in the UK. Spanning the districts of Salford, Oldham, Rochdale, and Bury, the NCA delivers integrated healthcare services to over one million people. It also works closely with the Northwest Ambulance Service to keep both staff and patients safe.
Communication plays an essential role in upholding that safety — which is why the NCA deployed BlackBerry® AtHoc®.
98% Reduction in Response Time
Immediate Adoption and Acceptance by Staff
Seamless Interoperability with Partners and Other Agencies
Saving Time to Save Lives
"Effective communication is key to every single incident response," explains NCA Emergency Planning Support Officer Josh McKenna. "Quite often during a disruptive event, failings can occur at the first hurdle where people simply aren't notified in a timely manor. My role is to prevent that from happening."
For that, Josh McKenna needed to ensure emergency alerts were delivered to the right people, contained accurate information, and arrived in a timely fashion. The first two were easy enough to achieve. It was the third that proved challenging.
Making the Call
"During incidents, our switchboard operators would have to call through manually via telephone to individual lines," explains Josh McKenna. "We're talking large numbers of staff across all of our hospital sites, which could take hours. It was a huge bottleneck, and one we needed to remedy."
The answer was found at a Resilience Conference in Birmingham UK where the NCA Emergency Planning, Resilience & Response Team were presenting their experience of responding to the Manchester Areana attack. There, they met representatives who introduced them to AtHoc as a potential resolution to improving internal emergency communications. Only a short time later, they'd committed to a full deployment.
Getting the Word Out with Ease
One of the first things Josh McKenna and his team noticed about AtHoc was how easy the solution was to both deploy and use. The NCA's parent organisation, the National Health Service, has an incredibly rigorous approval process for new technologies. Changes to internal systems require multiple audits and sign-offs.
With AtHoc, this wasn't an issue.
"AtHoc is essentially browser-based, so we were able to start using it right away," notes Josh McKenna. "Adoption happened almost overnight, too. Everybody loved it, especially directors and executives. They were impressed at how it worked and couldn't believe how much it cut down communication time."
The NCA now uses AtHoc to send targeted phone, email, and SMS alerts for disruptive events and emergency communications, and has connected to the Northwest Ambulance Service's AtHoc system to support statutory services incident declarations. NCA's telecommunications operators can also select and distribute information directly from emergency and weather alerts facilitating onward Strategical, Tactical and Operational redistribution across the organisation at speed.
"We've had a couple instances where AtHoc has potentially saved lives, such as where flooding caused multiple services to initiate emergency business continuity plans to maintain critical services" says Josh McKenna. "We were able to deploy a rapid notification out on what was happening and distribute it to key staff . Being able to respond so quickly was fantastic and most importantly maintained patient and staff safety."
Enabling a Healthier Approach to Crisis Communication
Currently, the NCA is working on implementing AtHoc's desktop notifications to send fast, discreet alerts as part of its lockdown response process. It plans to have the feature fully implemented by the end of 2025, at which time it will begin exploring geofencing and working more closely with Manchester Police and other first responders.
"The real game-changer with AtHoc has been all the subtle quality of life improvements," says Josh McKenna. "We've got all this information where you'd traditionally have to go to a physical office or a switchboard at our fingertips. We can immediately communicate with senior managers, executives, and directors across the Trust from anywhere in the world with the added capability of attaching key documentation including emergency action cards, and that's fantastic."
"There was no competition for AtHoc," Josh McKenna concludes. "It was our first choice, and we've stayed with it ever since. Having it cloud-based and available through a browser is perfect, and it does exactly what we need it to do."
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