East Midlands Ambulance Service

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) employs 3,000 staff at 70 locations – including three A&E control rooms – with the largest staff group employed in accident and emergency services. Their accident and emergency crews respond to 500,000 emergency calls every year, while patient transport staff and volunteer ambulance drivers provide care and transportation for 5,000 people each day. 

EMAS was using an old command and control communications system to manage emergency services that lacked the necessary functionality. The limitations of this system meant call flow was not able to be accurately monitored, and the appropriate staffing levels maintained, leading to inefficient resource management and increasing undue risk to patients.

The development of a new, state-of-the-art ambulance control center for EMAS created an opportunity to redefine the technology being used and find more effective communication solutions. 

By implementing a reliable, resilient, and modern communications system, EMAS were looking to improve productivity and resource efficiency through automatic call distribution functionality, as well as having the solution scale as the organization does.

EMAS's communication solution of Mitel's MiVoice Business and MiContact Center Management, paired with Activa's Cybertech Call Recording, met their emergency services' contact center requirements, including:

• Voice, messaging, mobility, and presence
• Conferencing and collaboration
• Apps integrations
• Automatic call distribution
• Call recording

Through the deployment of this solution, EMAS achieved a 20% performance gain. This was due to handling 20% more calls at the same pick-up speed with the same number of people using automatic call distribution, leading to an average answer time dropping below 5 seconds. EMAS also began to develop integrations between the MiVoice Business solution and their radio and patient record systems to drive greater efficiencies.