Mass Notification Solutions for Every Industry: Here’s What We Recommend
By Kara Stamets, Content Marketing Specialist, Alertus Technologies
Organizations in every industry face unique communication challenges in the face of threats like active shooters, severe weather, or medical emergencies. These challenges should be addressed with a mass notification system (MNS) that is tailored to your workplace, business, school, or hospital.
Is your mass notification system meeting your needs? Read on for the top products we recommend to address key challenges across a variety of industries.
Healthcare
Challenges:
Ensuring the safety of employees, patients, and visitors while distributing employee-only notifications or facility-wide announcements
Reaching employees and visitors across numerous buildings and units
Keeping patients calm in stressful situations
Avoiding notification fatigue
Solutions: To enhance healthcare communication, we recommend Alertus Desktop TM Notification so emergency notification teams can send alerts to employee computers positioned at desks and stations throughout your facility.
We also recommend the Alertus Fire Alarm Control Panel Interface which connects with your MNS and monitors your fire panel system to activate and distribute emergency alerts. Keeping the sensitive atmosphere of a healthcare facility in mind, the Fire Panel Interface can suppress notification modalities to minimize noise levels.
The wall-mounted Alert Beacon® is also incredibly useful for delivering audible-visual messages in high-traffic areas like information desks, nurse stations, and security kiosks.
Industrial Manufacturing
Challenges:
Widespread and loud environments
Reaching employees working in various capacities
Keeping employees informed while working on factory floors or off-site
Solutions: To reach workers across large facilities, an LED Marquee effectively displays vital and general announcements in large areas. Paired with the Alert Beacon®, these two devices provide legible, actionable information to all employees. The Alert Beacon captures the attention of building occupants with clear messages and strobe lights and is protected from hazardous work environments with an explosion-proof enclosure, an outdoor heated enclosure, or a wire guard.
The Alertus Omni-Directional Indoor Speaker is also ideal for large, wide-open areas like manufacturing facilities and warehouses because it provides crystal-clear indoor, audible notification and can be zoned to notify specific areas, buildings, and corridors.
Education
Higher Education
Challenges:
Widespread campuses
Multiple buildings and satellite campuses
Information overload
Solutions: Emergency notification coverage can be enhanced throughout academic, residential, recreational, and administrative settings by installing Desktop Notification, which provides extensive reach across computer labs, faculty desks, and offices, while outdoor notification includes the High Power Speaker Array (HPSA) and mobile HPSA, ideal for sporting events and other wide areas.
K-12 Schools
Challenges:
Staff and faculty without a means for quick and effective internal communication
Widespread areas
Internet outages and cellular network constraints
Loud environments such as cafeterias, gymnasiums, and playgrounds
Solutions: Empower and train teachers and staff members to utilize discreet panic buttons like the USB Multi Panic Button and WiFi Panic Button to seek help instantly when facing a threat. The Rapid Response Console (RRC) is another tool that allows authorized users to send preset alerts on a wall-mounted or hand-held tablet.
Like colleges and universities, the HPSA and MHPSA are reliable and effective alerting methods that serve large outdoor areas in K-12 schools.
Corporate
Challenges:
Employees spread out across multiple floors, buildings, and satellite campuses
Employees working in hybrid roles or completely remote
Information overload
Solutions: Alertus’ VoIP and IP phone notifications transform simple VoIP systems into paging devices that can send alerts to all or select VoIP desk phones throughout your facility.
Mobile phone apps are another fundamental way of reaching your employees: the Alertus Recipient App allows end users to receive push notifications and send geo-tagged incident reports to emergency personnel, and the Alertus Activator App enables dispatchers the ability to send emergency notifications on-the-go to all employees.
Transportation
Challenges:
Multiple announcements and notifications broadcasted at once
Providing communications in public and highly trafficked areas such as waiting areas, entry points, and terminals
Solutions: Digital signage and cable TV systems are essential components of an MNS in critical infrastructure facilities to get the right messages to the right groups of people. With the Alertus System, these facilities can reliably and consistently reach a large population across an expansive footprint by integrating the outdoor HPSA and personal mobile app notifications into their notification plan to reach all intended employees and visitors.
Military
Challenges:
Loud environments
Severe weather
Base closures
Security breaches
Solutions: The Alertus system is reliable and secure and can be deployed through a single point of activation to deliver critical alerts in any situation. Our audible notification solutions share critical information, meet ADA compliance, and meet and exceed all Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC) requirements.
For outdoor wide area alerting, the HPSA provides wide-reaching and clear notifications based on each unique situation, using Text-to-Speech technology for military bases to reach large numbers of people.
Contact us to determine which solutions will fit your facility the best, whether you wish to enhance your current system or establish an entirely new MNS.