In response to the needs of the two consortia, International SOS has set up a 65-member medical centre at Yuzhno, which is about 700 km south of the offshore fields. It also operates a network of smaller medical teams closer to the oil fields and on several of the offshore platforms. All this means that the network has had to be fitted with a communications infrastructure that assures high-level connectivity, to ensure that evacuations and emergencies are managed efficiently.

Always alert

A recent accident at one of these platforms demonstrates how this high-level connectivity was the critical factor that led to the rapid evacuation of an injured employee. An American expatriate suffered a crushed foot at this platform. A Russian doctor on duty immediately reported the accident to the International SOS medical centre at Yuzhno. This centre immediately alerted Singapore, the designated alarm centre for Yuzhno. Singapore, in turn, alerted the Tokyo alarm centre, to arrange for an air ambulance, translator and hospital admission in Japan. Tokyo also alerted the alarm centre in Philadelphia, U.S., so that the injured person's family was informed. The Russian doctor, in the meantime, stabilised this patient, working in tandem with doctors in Yuzhno via satellite telephone. The patient was airlifted by helicopter to the nearest airfield on Sakhalin, where he was evacuated by fixed-wing aircraft to Yuzhno. International SOS's doctors attended to him at Yuzhno, aboard another aircraft that had been chartered to fly him on to Sapporo, Japan, for hospitalisation. It took 12 hours to complete the transfer to the hospital from the moment the accident occurred.

International SOS has tapped on the expertise of communications solution provider Nortel Networks, Inc., to develop this high-level connectivity. "Nortel has provided us the technology and capability to maintain and manage the complex call centre environment we have," says Ian Baker, CIO, International SOS.

International SOS has installed Nortel's Symposium call centre suite of solutions at nine of its 26 alarm centres and it intends to install another four systems this year. "This solution also enables us to analyse our customer-response performance and generate metrics on call centre performance."

One other Nortel product that International SOS uses at its alarm centres is the Meridian PBX. It has call centre functionality built into it, which means that, should the primary call centre server(s)for some reason shut down, the Meridian switch will instantly take control of this function.