This article orginally appeared in Urgent Communications. The online version can be viewed here.

Four counties in Western Pennsylvania set out to do something that hadn't been done before, and in the process, dramatically improved emergency response regionwide

The counties of Venango, Lawrence, Butler and Mercer, all located within Southwestern PA, all had computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems that had reached end of life and needed replacement. In spite of three of the counties sharing a CAD system vendor, all four counties had standalone systems and were unable to forward essential CAD data when they transferred calls to each other.

MCP's Chief Operating Officer, Darrin Reilly, was recently featured in a Hexagon Radio's podcast discussing the transformation taking place in mission-critical communities. Forcing that transformation is the increase multimedia data flows that can play a role helping to improve emergency response outcomes. Emergency Services Internet Protocol Networks (ESInets), are providing public safety agencies with a medium to send and receive data-rich multimedia, including images, text, video and data from other sensors.