Federal Agency Expands Emergency Notification

SWN Communications Inc., a provider of emergency notification and other on-demand alerting and response services, recently announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has expanded its use of the New York City company’s Send Word Now for emergency communication across the organization. The NIH will extend its use of the SWN Alert Service across its main campus in Bethesda, MD and to NIH facilities in the Washington metropolitan area and around the country. The system will be used to communicate time-sensitive and critical events to 35,000 emergency response personnel, employees, contractors, and other users of the system.

Read TFM‘s July 2008 coverage of emergency notification in “Getting The Message” by Columnist Tom Condon.

The NIH includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency has used the Send Word Now solution since 2005 for urgent and emergency communication. This latest expansion will increase usage of the system organization-wide, enable rapid response in the event of a crisis, provide the ability to mobilize staff and emergency response resources during a critical incident and facilitate secure and auditable information exchange enterprise-wide.

“The National Institutes of Health joins a growing list of federal agencies that rely on Send Word Now for secure, reliable communication daily,” says Tony Schmitz, CEO of SWN Communications Inc. “Send Word Now has been battle tested by high-level federal agencies, and has passed stringent federal software security checks and independent audits. Our federal government clients look to Send Word Now to play an important role in supporting continuity of government planning, emergency management, regulatory compliance and protection of critical infrastructure.”

Among its clients, Send Word Now provides smart messaging platforms to the City of New York, Monster Worldwide, Inc., and the United Network for Organ Sharing.

* NIH Disclaimer: The NIH does not endorse or recommend any product, service, or enterprise.