The North East Ambulance Service provides a number of NHS services, and covers the counties of County Durham, Northumberland, and Tyne and Wear, along with the boroughs of Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar, Cleveland and Stockton-On-Tees.
That's 60 stations spread across a square area of 3,200 miles, and home to 2.6 million people. The service employs more than 2,000 staff and responds to over 360,000 emergency and urgent incidents per annum. The NEAS are also known for pioneering the use of the NHS Pathways triage system, and 111 telephone service which provides help in non life-threatening emergencies.
As such, the service is regularly called upon by those in the media to provide radio interviews and comment regarding the work they do. The requirement to communicate professionally with the media along with a need for specialist advice led the service to contact Canford who have been supplying broadcast and professional audio equipment for 40 years.
North East Ambulance Service Assistant Director of Communications, Mark Cotton said:
We bought a Glensound ISDN GSGC5 broadcast contribution unit from Canford Audio about ten years ago and it’s working as well now as it did when we bought it. We are a high profile emergency and NHS service which attracts a lot of media attention. Our ISDN mixer allows us to give high quality broadcast interviews to local and national radio stations. The sound quality is as good as being in the radio studio, but when the broadcaster is miles away and wanting to do an early morning or late night interview, we can respond quickly and easily from the comfort of our offices. Using an ISDN mixer gives us a crystal clear line and ensures our interviews are heard clearly by listeners and meets the broadcast standards of the radio station.
More recently, we have wanted to record some of these radio interviews to use ourselves or to check a pre-recorded interview against the live broadcast. When we contacted Canford Audio, they immediately retrieved our original order and put us in touch with an advisor to help with our requirements. The service was fast and faultless. Canford Audio understood what we wanted and quickly got back with exactly what we needed. As a result, we bought a Tascam solid state audio recording solution which can plug directly into the ISDN mixer and record in WAV and MP3 formats to compact flash, SD card and audio CD. The service from the team at Canford was excellent.
Canford Product Manager, Stephen Gallagher added:
Canford have had a relationship with the NEAS for over a decade. It’s a privilege and pleasure to support this local and vitally important organisation with specialist advice and to hold their trust to supply equipment which is both technically and commercially appropriate. We look forward to many more years ahead working with Mark and the North East Ambulance Service team.