Ouch! Can medical emergencies be less painful to deal with on-site?

In a report published by the Health and Safety Executive in the UK in late 2020, there were 61,000 non-fatal injuries to workers on construction sites. The main causes of these were slips, trips or falls (on the same level) and falls from a height. Of course, there are many other causes – from flying objects to carrying heavy items.

This proves that despite all the modern safety practices, injuries and medical emergencies such as heart attacks are inevitably still a significant issue on construction projects. With 2.8% of construction workers on average in the UK alone getting injured whilst on site, dealing with medical emergencies is of the upmost importance – and it can be difficult to alert to an emergency of this type quickly.

There is a cost impact too. 27% of the 61,000 injuries reported resulted in 7+ days of absence. Injuries cost the construction industry an estimated £659m in 2018/19 according to the HSE. So surely alerting to these situations early, if they cannot be prevented altogether, is of critical importance. That is where advanced wireless systems come in – including Ramtech’s WES3 alert system and REACT cloud-based notification solution.

WES3 Call Points include a medical alert button. When the medical alert button is pressed for 2 seconds, an alert goes straight to the control centre of the system to notify, in real-time, that a medical emergency has taken place. In addition, the system details the exact location of the call point from which it was raised, in accordance with the site’s fire plan, so the location can be found easily. The medical alert does not disrupt the whole site either as it doesn’t set off a site wide alarm – a useful feature, especially on larger sites.

Ramtech’s REACT solution also offers an app-based Medical Alert, which uses GPS to pinpoint the location from where the alert has been raised – this is particularly useful for very large sites where working outdoors is required. REACT can also link into the WES3 system to enable medical notifications off site that have been raised via the medical alert button on a WES3 Call Point. Whilst injuries will sadly never be completely preventable on construction sites, it is good to know that technology is there to help deal with these unfortunate situations as rapidly as possible.

Source: Construction statistics in Great Britain, 2020. Data up to March 2020. Published 4th November 2020. Health and Safety Executive. Accessed 30.04.2021. Link