Rhode Island’s 911 Emergency Center has delayed the scheduled launch of a new program to train call takers to provide CPR and other emergency medical instructions over the phone due to problems with its aging computer system.
The center’s “bare bones” computer-aided dispatch, or CAD, system has to be completely replaced with one that can support the software used for emergency medical dispatch, J. David Smith, the center’s director, said Wednesday. Until a new CAD system is in place, he said, it doesn’t make sense to begin training 911 call takers.
The 911 center’s new emergency medical dispatch program — which was expected to be up and running this month — now probably will not launch until the fall or winter, Smith said.
The state approved a budget for fiscal 2020, which began July 1, that included $220,000 to train all 911 call takers to respond to cardiac arrests and other medical emergencies. The funding for emergency medical dispatch training followed an investigation by The Public’s Radio and ProPublica that raised questions about whether the lack of training for the state’s 911 call takers is costing lives.
EMD certification is required for people who answer emergency medical calls in every other New England state.
The shortcomings of the 911 center’s “mini-CAD” system came to light after concerns Smith raised about the system’s cyber security features led the agency to hire an Exeter, R.I.-based IT consulting firm, Carousel Industries, Inc., to do an analysis of the entire system. The report, issued in December, found that the system had some “significant gaps,” Smith said, which “had the potential of literally shutting down the 911 system.”
The most serious issues, he said, were corrected “within a week or two,’’ by replacing hardware and upgrading software which had outdated antivirus programs. Other work, he said, is ongoing.
“I think it’s just one more of the symptoms of lack of funding and expertise,’’ Smith said. The 911 center’s CAD system he said, “was all we could afford to have.”
The upside of discovering the system’s shortcomings, Smith said, is that the center is now on track to replace its current CAD system with a much more powerful one. The new system will be able to share information about residents — such as the location of residents on dialysis machines or who have hearing impairments — more consistently and reliably with municipal dispatch centers. The current system shares more limited information over a private network, he said, that at times gets disrupted or shuts down.
It’s unclear what the new CAD system will cost; Smith said the contract with the selected bidder for the upgrade, Texas-based Tyler Technologies Inc., has not yet been signed.
Smith was appointed by Governor Gina Raimondo last August to take over operation of the 911 center. He replaced Gregory Scungio, who was removed from his post last March, after it was discovered that he had been training call takers in CPR without the proper certification.
