Ambulance Radio Programme (ARP) - Ambulance Radio Programme (ARP)

Ambulance Radio Programme (ARP)

Establishing a world-class digital foundation for emergency services across the UK

As a trusted technology partner for ARP, Exponential-e is helping support ongoing improvements to systems, processes, and service quality.Contents

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Ambulance Radio Programme (ARP)

Case Study

Establishing a
world-class digital foundation for emergency services across the UK

About the ARP

The Ambulance Radio Programme (ARP) delivers mission-critical communication and mobilisation technologies to ensure effective communication between Ambulance Service Trusts, the NHS, and other emergency responders across the UK.

The Challenge

The successful delivery of emergency services depends on critical platforms being always on and always available, ensuring citizens in the most remote areas can always make contact and receive aid as quickly as possible. With even the smallest periods of downtime potentially costing lives, ARP demands the highest standards of performance and resilience from its underlying connectivity, with rigorous SLAs in place to ensure these targets are met.

In order to further optimise the availability of emergency services across the UK, there are currently two major programmes being implemented by ARP across the UK. The Control Room Solution (CRS), which is utilised by ambulance services across England and Scotland, ensuring critical communications between the emergency control room dispatchers and operational crews are completely seamless. The Mobile Data & Vehicle Solution (MDVS) will replace legacy communications equipment for the English and Welsh Ambulance Service Trusts.

Both programmes required a secure, resilient, and highly available IT infrastructure as the underlying foundation, for which ARP selected the Exponential-e Group, encompassing Exponential-e, Vysiion, and Xpertex - as their trusted technology partner.

The Solution

The Exponential-e Group has worked closely with ARP for a number of years, beginning with the CNAM project, which Vysiion successfully executed before its acquisition by the Group. Here, multiple critical platforms that were previously managed on a regional basis, with discrete infrastructure and applications run independently by each Trust across England and Wales, were fully centralised in ARP’s data centres, including both CRS and MDVS. A whole new network was utilised as the foundation, connecting the centralised ARP control room applications to each regional Trust’s control rooms. This highly resilient network infrastructure was designed to maintain the highest levels of uptime and availability across all regions, optimising the delivery of critical services.

ARP would later build on these early successes, engaging the wider Exponential-e Group as its requirements evolved. Exponential-e later delivered a fully centralised, UK-based service desk, available 24/7, and continues to work with ARP’s own teams to identify new opportunities for service improvements and process optimisation.

Over the course of several years, the partnership between ARP and the Exponential-e Group has continued to evolve and is now in a strong position to take on further challenges. A particular focus is the digitisation of processes and onboarding of multiple new solutions to further optimise the availability and delivery of emergency services nationwide.

Solution benefits

Full centralisation of multiple critical platforms, powered by a highly resilient, highly available private network, supporting consistent performance and availability of critical services across all regions.
A 24 / 7, UK-based service desk for all IT-related questions, concerns, and incident management.
A partnership built on trust, consultation, and service quality, driving ongoing improvements.
Hands-on engagement and integration with other suppliers

The programme has lots of moving parts, and a lot of key users and stakeholders - all with unique needs and ways of working. ARP needed a team, processes, and technologies which could be used to create a common service, capable of integrating with each Ambulance Trust and user organisation.

Mathew Baker
IT Service Manager, ARP