Muhlenberg College EMS is a student-run volunteer EMS team providing 24×7 rapid response medical services for the 2,200 students of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. The Campus Safety Department alerts this thirty-five-member organization when a medical emergency is reported on campus. With aging radio equipment and limited radio communications coverage throughout the campus, including inside its many buildings, Crew Chief and Technology Officer Nathan Brown worked with TuWay Communications to design and implement a total system upgrade for the team.
First, a Motorola radio repeater was installed, eliminating two-way radio coverage problems. Second, at the Campus Safety Office, separate paging and desk set terminals that had reached the end of life were replaced with a new Gaitronics desk set with built-in paging capabilities. This was a major improvement… enabling alerting and team communications through a single terminal. Lastly, the team’s outdated portable radios were replaced with new Motorola XPR3300e portables. Since the new radios have paging capability, this eliminated the need for carrying a separate pager and the costs associated with maintaining a fleet of pagers. The bottom line is that the new solution provides Muhlenberg College’s student-run EMS Team with a communications platform that is more streamlined, more cost-effective, and more complete.
According to Brown, “The radios and new system have been performing like champs. We have had an incredible amount of call volume lately, including evenings with more than five back-to-back or even simultaneous calls utilizing multiple channels. There were no issues, and the batteries are 100 times better than the old ones. We are so happy we worked with TuWay to get this done.”
