Yorkshire Air Ambulance is a rapid respond emergency service covering the largest county in the UK including over 5 million people. The Yorkshire Air Ambulance Charity was established in 2000, with its Head Office in Halifax and the two air ambulance helicopters operating from the only dedicated Air Desks in the UK at Leeds Bradford International Airport and Sheffield City Heliport. The Yorkshire Air Ambulance has developed into a sophisticated emergency service that provides life-saving emergency medical care throughout Yorkshire. To keep both of Yorkshire’s ambulances in the air the charity needs to raise £7,200 per day – equivalent to £2.65 million per year.
Background
SICL was referred to Yorkshire Air Ambulance in 2003 and enjoyed charity pricing from SICL until the decision was made by SICL in March 2006 to provide all services on a free of charge basis as a donation worth over £125,000.00 over a contracted 5 year period. SICL is in effect IT for the charity, providing Helpdesk and ‘man-on-site’ support with consultancy services and IT procurement leveraging charity hardware and software pricing for the organisation. Cliff Fox, Managing Director of SICL, explains, “I went to the air desk launch in March 2006 and met many children who wouldn’t be alive but for the air ambulance. I knew we had to do more for the charity and everyone in the business agreed. It’s our way of giving back to the community in which most of us live.”
Communications
Over the last few years SICL has designed a WAN infrastructure based on Cisco routing, switching and security. In 2008 SICL implemented Cisco Unified Communications at Yorkshire Air Ambulance following a review of the charity's communications strategy. It was identified that the Charity office and operational bases in Leeds and Sheffield would benefit from greater collaboration and access to shared systems. The Cisco Unified Communications platform enabled it to transfer calls between sites, connect to systems at any of the charity locations, collect voicemail via email and ensure consistent handling of all communications channels. The charity also benefited from a number of operational and cost efficiencies; in particular all calls now route through head office enabling the charity to benefit from greater savings from least-cost routing.
“Since 2003 YAA has trusted SICL to support all aspects of their IT infrastructure. In 2008 clear benefits became clear for replacing the telephone system with a multi site system capable of handling both voice and data services. After consultation with SICL, the recommendation was to use CISCO Call Manager due to its flexibility and future proof design, which in turn was installed. Once again the overall process from consultation to installation and support has left us in no doubt that SICL are the right company to support our systems as we move forward”.
Neale Jacobs
Operations Manager
Yorkshire Air Ambulance