Four Midstate 911 centers are high tech getting upgrades

DAUPHIN COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — Some Midstate 911 centers are getting a major upgrade, and abc27 News had a first-hand look.

Dauphin, Cumberland, Adams, and Franklin counties are rolling out the Carbyne APEX cloud-native emergency call-handling platform works.

“The new system has several different features that are great, excellent, crazy. It’s going to enable us to help the residents better in every situation,” said Dauphin County Public Safety Director, Jeff Enders.

“Basically, we’ve reimagined 911 and providing citizens, call takers, dispatchers and responders new capabilities,” said Carbyne Founder and CEO Amir Elichai.

New capabilities including a live video feature, providing critical information that dispatchers can see.

“The individual will be able to actually use their cell phone and show the dispatcher exactly what’s going on. The dispatcher will then be able to relay exact information to the emergency responders,” said South Central Emergency Medical Services chief and CEO Jason Campbell.

For example, when people call 911 and they say a house is on fire.

“If the person provides video, we’ll be able to tell us very quickly if we’re actually going to a working fire or, you know, somebody maybe just burned some food on the stove, which we can, you know, downgrade our resources very quickly or if we need more resources, we can ask for them before we even get to the scene,” said Swatara Township Fire Chief Mike Ibberson.

Officials say the photos and videos are saved and if needed can later be used for criminal prosecution.

Another thing the system does, “the biggest thing for our region is the language conversion,” said Enders.

“Instead of bringing like a translator onto the call. So, if someone is calling in and speaking French as an example, automatically you’re going to see it in English. You’re going to speak English back; you’re going to hear it in French,” said Elichai.

The system currently supports 14 languages with the goal to expand in the future.

This technology can also filter our calls that are not emergencies or callers who are reporting the same emergency.

“If now there is a big highway accident, right, and now you have 35 people calling in and you have 20 people waiting on the line. Instead of waiting on the line, we’re going to start asking you questions about are you calling about this car accident? Are you injured?” said Elichai.

Based on those answers, “we’re going to understand, are you calling on the same event and say, hey, sir, thank you very much. We already have information as long as you are not injured. Please hang up,” said Elichai.

The new technology is paid for through grants. By upgrading the system, it will save each county $1 million.

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