The Glenview Public Safety Dispatch Center is using a new artificial intelligence program to help train new and seasoned 911 dispatchers to handle almost every emergency scenario that the job may throw at them, officials said.
“This is a game changer in the ‘911’ world,” said Brent Reynolds, director of public safety and support services for the village of Glenview.
“It’s all about providing the highest level of service to the public when they dial 911,” he added.
He also said it’s all about potentially saving lives when precious minutes can mean the difference between life and death.
Glenview recently partnered with a company called “Corti” to use its Voyager Artificial Intelligence platform and Artificial Intelligence Skill Lab to help train new 911 dispatchers, also called telecommunicators, and to sharpen the skills of existing 911 operators. Reynolds said that training is critical because telecommunicators coordinate communications between emergency personnel, police, and the public.
The Voyager AI platform has been “trained” on thousands of hours of phone calls with medical patients and can identify words and trends in telephonic communication, said Annie Marchiafava, operations manager with the Village of Glenview. She said the village is using this platform to identify questions telecommunicators are asking, tracking how long calls take and identifying opportunities to improve outcomes.
“The more feedback the better,” she added. “The more we can provide the telecommunicator feedback the better their performance is going to be.”
Marchiafava said two 911 call centers, one in Glenview and one in Highland Park, take 911 calls for 11 nearby communities including, Glencoe police and fire, Glenview police and fire, Grayslake police and fire, Highland Park police and fire, Highwood police, Kenilworth police, Lake Bluff police and fire, Lake Forest police and fire, Lindenhurst police, Morton Grove police, Northfield police, Niles police and Winnetka police.
She said those two 911 centers combined get about 84,000 calls a year and that the new Artificial Intelligence Skill Lab allows users to sit in front of a computer and easily sort through various types of calls, or “scenarios,” to be used in 911 operator training and quality assurance.
“That’s not something we’ve ever been able to do,” she said. “In the past that would require us to save the call, set up a time for them to come in and listen to the call. This gives them the opportunity to get in there and see it themselves and see where they need to improve.”
Trainees and experienced telecommunicators can easily pull up 911 emergency calls on everything from heart attacks to dog bites, listen to how the calls were handled by the 911 telecommunicator and learn from that, Reynolds added.
“It’s all medical based,” he said. “It could be anything from a sick person to a cardiac arrest where we would initiate CPR. It could be the Heimlich maneuver for a choking person. It could be a blood pressure problem. It’s really any medical scenario.”
“There’s a real volume of calls we can practice,” he said. “A telecommunicator in training may not get a cardiac arrest or choking call. Now we can have a scenario where they can practice it and it’s pretty close to real life. It gives us more opportunities to have those various scenarios and with real time feedback.”
Brian L. Cox is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
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