Lori Preuss, CPE, is the Director of Business Development/Project Management, EDC Destroy the traditional independent silos of public safety information and move forward with information sharing between departments within a region to enhance emergency services response for all of your citizens. NG-CAD-X by Emerging Digital Concepts (EDC) enhances the capabilities of your E9-1-1 center or real-time crime center (RTCC) by allowing for real-time communication with adjacent departments with the stroke of a key, providing faster and more efficient service to the public.
NG-CAD-X is a Next Generation Computer Aided Dispatch Exchange application programming interface (API) that links various communications centers' CAD systems. The centers do not have to change systems or functions at the workstation. The API works with all CAD systems. It also integrates calls for service and unit detail to third-party, authorized applications such as maps and vehicle location technologies.
The system can eliminate E9-1-1 staff having to place traditional telephone calls or use ring-down lines to contact neighboring communities where the E9-1-1 personnel may end up waiting in a queue or on hold. When an E9-1-1 call is misrouted, or the caller has traveled away from the location of a situation, or a different agency is required for response, and the caller must be transferred to the correct response agency, this can cause a delay of 2½ - 4½ minutes per call. When connected to the NG-CAD-X hub, the call-taker can transfer the information electronically in near real-time to the correct agency via no call transfer. The no-call transfer recovers life-saving minutes for emergencies. For example, the survivability of a cardiac arrest patient decreases by 7 - 10% per minute without CPR or defibrillation . Should CPR be delayed more than three minutes, the lack of blood flow to the brain can lead to brain injury that gets progressively worse. In contrast, the early onset of CPR plus defibrillation within 3 – 5 minutes of cardiac arrest can produce survival rates as high as 49 – 75%.
NG-CAD-X interoperable computer-aided dispatch (CAD) hub also benefits your department by allowing for automatic first response for fire/rescue, reducing the response time to citizens' emergencies. With automatic first response one customer site saw a three-minute decrease in response time to a structure fire within twelve hours of implementing the hub.
Information sharing allows for enhanced situational awareness of incidents impacting your neighboring communities, allowing your team to prepare in advance for rapidly unfolding calls for service where mutual aid is necessary. With shared CAD data, your response personnel of all disciplines will have access to the same information in real-time, ensuring a streamlined information flow. This flow of information creates a much safer response for all public safety personnel and enhances safety for the community.
EDC is continually evolving and innovating its core NG-CAD-X product to satisfy emerging needs and use cases. The focus is on the users. To date, EDC has provided these types of enhancements without additional charge - to all of our customer installations, believing that what supports one of our customers may also help others. One recent enhancement within the NG-CAD-X command-and-control console focuses on the organizations' management teams and local real-time crime centers. This enhancement allows for a high-level view of all of the exchange participants' active incidents, sorted by the jurisdiction, in real-time as the incidents develop and evolve. This overview of all active incidents in a region allows for mitigation or supplementation of response efforts, along with the rapid identification of the widespread impact of critical incidents. The situational awareness provided by the command-and-control console enhancement also allows for vertical integration for state and Federal agencies.
NG-CAD-X is a Next Generation Computer Aided Dispatch Exchange application programming interface (API) that links various communications centers' CAD systems. 
An additional benefit of NG-CAD-X is eliminating the need to change CAD systems to share data with adjacent jurisdictions. Instead, the hub does the translation on the back end, making the EDC system CAD agnostic. With the increased availability of emerging technologies, NG-CAD-X allows for integrating new technologies into the CAD system. Integration is a true benefit because the last thing your E9-1-1 center needs is an additional screen to monitor when their focus should be on their CAD. All the data integrated into CAD can then be copied over to your records management system (RMS), creating a streamlined pathway for data such as artificial intelligence (AI) transcription, AI foreign language translation, and texts or incident-related imagery (including video) received via E9-1-1 calls.
The hub will also allow those critical images and videos to be passed through the CAD system to the field personnel on mobile data terminals, getting the images and videos into the hands of the commanders and response personnel on the scene without any additional technologies, apps, or devices. These are just a few ways that EDC provides a secure, reliable, and easy-to-use platform for exchanging critical information across platforms and jurisdictions to improve the response to citizens experiencing crises.
Emerging Digital Concepts is excited to launch an additional NG-CAD-X supporting application, a workstation-to-exchange service (WXS), to connect small agencies and NGOs needing integration to the interoperable hub, allowing them access without a full CAD integration. WXS has CAD-like capabilities and functions similar to a CAD system. WXS is a cost-effective solution for agencies with a high likelihood of needing assistance processing large-scale critical incidents to benefit from interoperable data with NG-CAD-X integrated adjacent jurisdictions.
