How does the Freedom Medical Alarm work?

Equipment and Monitoring

The Freedom Medical Alarm service utilises equipment manufactured by CHIPTECH, a New Zealand company based in Christchurch. The equipment consists of a Base Unit (or dialler, 1.), and a portable transmitter (otherwise known as a pendant). The pendant can either be worn around the neck (2.) or the wrist (3.)

The medical alarm equipment plugs directly into a standard telephone jack and uses the phone line to transmit data including the alarm number, activation alerts, back up battery information, and fault and service information for the transmitter, base unit and telephone connection.

In addition, the unit uses a smartcard to store the last 240 events the alarm has completed providing a backup data repository of information should it ever be required.

The equipment can over-ride a single engaged phone line and is smart enough to know when multiple activations occur in a short period. For safety, the unit will only transmit one alert so the phone line is free to take an inbound call from the Ambulance communications staff.

A speaker in the equipment allows the Ambulance communications staff to engage in a conversation with the client (if they are capable). This is important as this means an emergency medical triage process can occur. The triage will identify key medical determinants and assign a level of response from Priority 1 (life threatening) to a non medical response. If the client is unable to be contacted, the Ambulance communications staff will dispatch an ambulance immediately