The UK's Health Service Told To Ditch 'Outdated' Pagers (bbc.com)

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The UK's Health Service Told To Ditch 'Outdated' Pagers (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on Monday February 25, 2019 @05:36AM from the it's-time-to-move-on dept.

The UK's NHS has been told to stop using pagers for communications by 2021, in order to save money. The health service still uses about 130,000 pagers, which is about 10% of the total left in use globally. From a report: They cost the NHS about $8.6 million a year, because only one service provider supports them. Health Secretary Matt Hancock called them "outdated" and said he wanted to rid the NHS of "archaic technology like pagers and fax machines". However, many in the medical industry say that pagers are quick and reliable - especially in emergencies -- and proposed replacements have their own shortcomings.

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Here is why pagers are so important by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-25 05:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

They should keep the pagers, absolutely. The reason is this:
Pagers use slow transmission protocols that do not need a huge S/N to be properly decoded. That means pagers are going to work almost everywhere you would otherwise get an annoying "No Service" notification on your phone, such as elevators, parking garages, basements, and so on.
It would be a blunder of gargantuan proportions to stop using pagers for critical messaging. Just because the mobile carriers want to take over the pager spectrum for 5G doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
1. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Joce640k · 2019-02-25 05:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  130,000 of them for $8.6 million a year. What are they going to replace them with that costs only $5.5 per month and has the same reliability?
  
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2. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by bugs2squash · 2019-02-25 06:00 · Score: 1
  
  so load up the regular cell signal with lots of forward error correction when transmitting "high importance" messages to phones that are experiencing poor signal quality.
  
  --
  Nullius in verba
3. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-25 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  So design a new protocol, with new software, probably new hardware, an inefficient use of the limited spectrum, and oh by the way, it won't work, because attenuation is still going to absorb all of the energy. 25 MHz pager signals diffract and penetrate buildings exceptionally well. 600Mhz and up cell phone signals just don't.
4. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by omnichad · 2019-02-25 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  The whole message would fit in one packet. You could retransmit multiple times, but I doubt you'd have room for FEC.
5. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by lgw · 2019-02-25 06:32 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  hey should keep the pagers, absolutely. The reason is this:
  Pagers use slow transmission protocols that do not need a huge S/N to be properly decoded. That means pagers are going to work almost everywhere you would otherwise get an annoying "No Service" notification on your phone, such as elevators, parking garages, basements, and so on.
  Amazon made the transition from physical pagers to an app just a few years ago. Turns out that pager coverage and reliability isn't as good as you'd expect once you get down to only one vendor. Plus, in a disaster where thousands of pages get sent in a short time, you saturate the vendor's infrastructure and pages get delayed by tens of minutes.
  The app also sucked at first, and most people on call used both, but within about 2 years it was more reliable on average than physical pagers, and they were lagely abandoned.
  For those who don't know, Amazon cares very much about paging people. Paging doctors is merely a matter of life and death; while paging engineers when amazon.com is broke affects profit. Needless to say, far more money gets spent addressing the latter.
  It is really cool though to see the machine work from the inside. When anything goes wrong anywhere that affects your ability to buy stuff on amazon.com, it takes less than five minutes before engineers representing dozens of teams are fully engaged with the problem, with most people checking in within 2-3 minutes. Problems are usually localized to one team, usually with an initial theory of cause, within about 10 minutes of the problem appearing. It's amazing to watch from the sidelines when you're not the one on the hook.
  
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6. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Z00L00K · 2019-02-25 06:51 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Add to it that a pager also is fine when you have radio-sensitive medical equipment like EEG and EKG measurement equipment.
  
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7. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by pr0fessor · 2019-02-25 07:01 · Score: 2
  
  Considering the low cost it doesn't make very much sense to try to fix something that isn't really broken.
  I was at a billiards tournament a long time ago and near the end this woman had her pager go off while she was shooting she was concentrating so hard that the sudden sound and vibration scared the crap out of her and she screamed then fell forward onto the table. She was so embarrassed and the pager kept going off she could hardly fish it out of her pocket. Too bad it was before the smart phone, it would have gone viral.
8. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Z00L00K · 2019-02-25 07:04 · Score: 1
  
  Go back to a paging system with speakers; "Dr. Kervorkian, please call 666" or the number displays on the walls.
  
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9. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Z00L00K · 2019-02-25 07:05 · Score: 1
  
  25MHz is a too long wavelength, use a 150MHz system - it works better through windows and corridors.
  
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10. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · 2019-02-25 07:52 · Score: 2
  
  Those systems don't work when you need to call a specialist back in right now. Even a cellphone is significantly less reliable.
  And, I'll bet those number displays actually cost more than 8.6 million a year.
  
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11. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by lgw · 2019-02-25 07:55 · Score: 2
  
  The problem is that time you *are* on the hook, and that 5 minutes of Amazon.com downtime costs you your job and any prospect at future employment.
  Oh, the job market for former Amazon engineers is very hot, no worries there. Almost no one likes working there, so people leave all the time.
  
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12. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · 2019-02-25 07:56 · Score: 2
  
  Amazon probably has WiFI hotspots and cell minirepeaters throughout their buildings, and fewer (unintentional) Faraday cages in their new er buildings. Also, less equipment giving off all other kinds of EM radiation. I mean, I don't doubt you could build a better system when you have the cash, but I'm sure Amazon spends more than $5.5/employee*/month on comms infrastructure.
  *I'm ignoring the warehouse workers, etc. and focusing on the "pager level" group.
  
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13. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by lgw · 2019-02-25 08:02 · Score: 2
  
  Yup, the budget for waking up engineers at 3AM is "whatever it needs to be". But apps worked much better than I expected for people away from the buildings, where I had figured that pager coverage would be better. Turns out not so much, if you build aggressive retry in on the app side.
  Interesting point though about paging people inside hospitals in arbitrary spaces. Of course, adequate WiFi repeaters is "just" budget, but there are other constraints as well.
  
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14. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Highdude702 · 2019-02-25 08:10 · Score: 2
  
  How does the signal get to them when they're at dinner with their wife? There is a reason they have pagers on them at all times.
15. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by thegarbz · 2019-02-25 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  They should keep the pagers, absolutely. The reason is this:
  Pagers use slow transmission protocols that do not need a huge S/N to be properly decoded.
  
  That is not a reason to keep using pagers. In fact every emergency service messaging protocol achieves what you described, including messaging based systems that run on the Airwave network or the proposed public safety LTE extensions.
  
  It would be a blunder of gargantuan proportions to stop using pagers for critical messaging.
  That blunder along with your doom scenario hasn't played out in other parts of the world where pagers have been abolished. What would be a real blunder is when the pager network dies as the hardware is well and truly beyond end of life. Keeping old radio equipment operational is an exercise in endless and increasingly expensive frustration.
16. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by whoever57 · 2019-02-25 08:41 · Score: 1, Offtopic
  
  Are you sure it was a pager? There are other devices that vibrate and can be controlled remotely, other than cellphones and pagers.
  When was this?
  
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17. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by lgw · 2019-02-25 10:08 · Score: 2
  
  The amazon app does not work in elevators, unless you installed an AP in your elevator shaft. Think 'faraday cage'. A lot of times people can be in elevators.
  And yet you still get paged when the door opens. It's almost as if there was an unlimited budget to make it work well.
  
  Pocsag/flex pagers have better coverage than shitty GSM and WiFi.
  
  Works great on paper. Funny thing: monopoly pager companies aren't so great on upkeep. Plus, people know where their cell phone dead spots are, and can avoid them while on call, but are oblivious to pager dead spots.
  The experiment was run. After a couple of years or improving the system, pages showed up faster and more reliably with the app.
  
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18. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by dryeo · 2019-02-25 10:25 · Score: 2
  
  The problem is a public health system has to always think about expenses, so can't just budget "whatever it needs to be"
  
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19. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · 2019-02-25 16:59 · Score: 1
  
  The NHS is clearly claiming it's a financial issue, so I'd imagine the budget differences are pretty high. Although, I must say, with your "whatever it needs to be," I'm envisioning a helicopter going to pick up an engineer who is rock climbing on vacation. Like Tom Cruise in one of his movies.
  
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20. Re:Here is why pagers are so important by lgw · 2019-02-26 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  There is a distinguished engineer who flies in on a private plane, but then it's his plane. Amazon isn't wasteful like that, but they will do practical stuff like hiring a team just to make the paging app better. Like I said, it's not some petty matter of life and death, there are corporate profits at stake.
  
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smart by bugs2squash · 2019-02-25 05:41 · Score: 1

sounds like an ideal app for a smartwatch

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1. Re:smart by Joce640k · 2019-02-25 05:54 · Score: 2
  
  Sure, let's make our emergency services rely on something that's delicate that needs constant battery recharging to work.
  
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2. Re:smart by Chris+Mattern · 2019-02-25 07:21 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, as others have pointed out, it sounds like an ideal app for what they're currently using. It's very cheap (maybe not as cheap as it used to be due to the lack of competition, but still much cheaper than any proposed replacements) and extremely reliable (in an application where reliability is the primary requirement). About the only reason anyone is coming up for retiring it seems to be, "But it's so OLD!"
Sounds like a lot by rmdingler · 2019-02-25 05:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

But that's only $66 US per year. If all you need yo do is contact someone to call or come in, that's way cheaper than providing phones to employees.

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Just trying to drive down Pager OEM stocks prices by mykepredko · 2019-02-25 05:46 · Score: 1

Everybody and I mean EVERYBODY knows pagers are going to make a big come back in 2019!

--
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The reason pagers are still alive by scorp1us · 2019-02-25 05:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

Pagers don't emit cellphone-level radiation & electrical interference around medical devices.
Pages have a weak acknowledge capability. Meanwhile you can't leave your cellphone by a radio. The interference it causes to the radio is the same interference it may cause in a medical device. And it may not cause a malfunction that gets noticed. What if the morphine drop was increased by a random flipped bit.
Medical devices are not evaluated in cellphone conditions. And given that doctors work in the immediate vicinity of medial equipment it is a risk the hospital is not willing to take.

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1. Re:The reason pagers are still alive by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-25 06:12 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Medical devices are not evaluated in cellphone conditions. And given that doctors work in the immediate vicinity of medial equipment it is a risk the hospital is not willing to take.
  That was the same garbage they used to explain why cellphones couldn't be used on airplanes. Simply a convenient lie. Do we really think an aircraft could be brought down or redirected off-course just by some jackass in the cabin whipping out his cellphone or grandma forgetting to put it in airplane mode? Of course not. And if there actually was a chance, the liability rests with the carriers. They'd never tolerate that kind of risk -- they would replace or shield the affected equipment. Same for hospitals.
2. Re:The reason pagers are still alive by jbmartin6 · 2019-02-25 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  So what are all the other hospitals in the world using? I am assuming from the disproportionate use in the UK that pagers are not universally used in medical settings for some reason like you describe. People are dying left and right where doctor's don't use pagers? Or is there some other system in place?
  
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3. Re:The reason pagers are still alive by scorp1us · 2019-02-25 07:47 · Score: 1
  
  The difference between planes and hospitals are large. For instance, one is on the ground and the other is in the sky. The other big difference: There aren't 200 people crammed into a hospital room all with their own electronics, just feet away from the avionics control circuitry.
  
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4. Re:The reason pagers are still alive by Etcetera · 2019-02-25 08:14 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Traditional pagers are not un-common in US hospitals, but it depends on a number of factors. Reliability, vendor contracts, urban/rural, and plenty of other things. Doctors usually don't need smartphones moment to moment absent some other check-in app.
  I used to work for an RTLS provider in hospitals that worked with a distinct radio protocol for telemetry tracking, and was running into problems at times converting to low-powered Bluetooth because there was a lot of other RF stuff running. There was a mobile interface to the data, but wired stations were always where the critical communication was happening.
  The hospitals I know of that have moved away from traditional paging have simply replaced them with on-site paging -- same kind of system you'd have to know your table was ready at a restaurant, but souped up. People really only migrated if/when they felt the last remaining local pager service was on its last legs, since there was a capital cost and not much reason to switch otherwise.
  
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5. Re:The reason pagers are still alive by Anne+Thwacks · 2019-02-25 10:20 · Score: 2
  
  Part of the reason for this might be that the UK settled on a manufacturer-independent protocol (POCSAG), so there were multiple sources (in the 1980's when I wrote the software for one of the manufacturers), This meant the market was both large and competitive at the time.
  The modem, display drive and the forward error correction were implemented in software in a single 4-bit micro, the radio was the only other chip. Hence low price and power consumption.
  The UK is very strong on "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and very averse to capital expenditure. The NHS does not have any money. I suspect the way junior doctors are used in the UK may be a factor in widespread pager use, and mobile phones may be the reason why the rest of the market is gone. Originally, stock price info was the big, profitable, market for my employers.
  If the service supplier is too expensive, the answer is to buy them out. However, that would be a political decision, and we have no single politician capable of actually taking a decision.
  
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6. Re:The reason pagers are still alive by rl117 · 2019-02-26 08:29 · Score: 1
  
  As someone who has worked with sensitive medical equipment, this is highly misleading. It's not always possible to effectively shield stuff. Strong microwave radiation can induce current in all sorts of devices; you've doubtless heard it affect loudspeakers. There are even more sensitive coils in many medical devices. Not turning phones off is a selfish thing to do. Why is your personal convenience more important than the primary function of a hospital?
Deploy their own Paging system by mprindle · 2019-02-25 05:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

I have several customers in our area including hospitals that have their own private paging systems. The spectrum is licensed and dedicated to their use. The are only designed to work with-in their facilities, which in the case of hospital staff, is mainly where they need the quick response. Outside the facilities then standard phone calls, text messaging can be used to call someone in.
The major downside is the support of the infrastructure to keep the system running, but with regular maintenance it's not that big of an ask.
1. Re:Deploy their own Paging system by buffcleb · 2019-02-25 07:01 · Score: 1
  
  I'm assuming they could piggy back on their EMS / Fire / Police systems... I'm a Vol. FireFighter in the states and we have our own private radio network in the town that is backed up by a neighboring town and the county... beyond that we can transmit directly from the Hall if things went really sideways...
2. Re:Deploy their own Paging system by Pascoea · 2019-02-25 07:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The major downside is the support of the infrastructure to keep the system running
  I think you've hit the nail on the head. The issue is that the equipment and expertise available to maintain a 1980s era network is dwindling. I used to work at a company who had the contract to maintain the local hospital's private pager network. I have no idea of the contract value, but they were the only game in town that had the knowledge to do it. There was literally no competition in the pager space around there. If they went tits up, the hospitals would have been screwed. I can see the desire to get away from a system like that.
3. Re:Deploy their own Paging system by thegarbz · 2019-02-25 08:18 · Score: 1
  
  If they are complaining about the cost of running pagers then they will not at all be happy with the cost of using ASTRO P25, though in the UK they'd be using the Airwave TETRA system.
4. Re:Deploy their own Paging system by hoofie · 2019-02-25 16:37 · Score: 1
  
  I'm assuming they could piggy back on their EMS / Fire / Police systems... I'm a Vol. FireFighter in the states and we have our own private radio network in the town that is backed up by a neighboring town and the county... beyond that we can transmit directly from the Hall if things went really sideways...
  The UK is very different - Fire, Ambulance and Police systems are defined at a national level even though there are individual authorities. It's a smallish island so you want interoperability between different counties etc.
lots of advantages by Comboman · 2019-02-25 06:00 · Score: 1

In addition to being cheaper than mobile phones, they also make more efficient use of radio bandwidth, have better reception (with fewer transmission towers) and have a battery life that smartphones (hell even feature phones) can only dream of.

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1. Re:lots of advantages by tlhIngan · 2019-02-25 06:50 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  battery life that smartphones (hell even feature phones) can only dream of.
  Most pagers I know of still use AA batteries. Why? Rechargables just don't last as long!
  They literally will last for months on a single AA battery. A busy pager may last a month (one that's constantly beeping and vibrating). Off a single AA battery.
  But one that isn't so busy can probably go up to a year on a single AA battery.
2. Re:lots of advantages by jbmartin6 · 2019-02-25 07:22 · Score: 1
  
  Isn't this a bit of a moot point when the person already has a smartphone that they reliably keep charged for a whole host of other reasons?
  
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3. Re:lots of advantages by jbmartin6 · 2019-02-25 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  But if the person already has a working smart phone, what's the point? They are going to keep the smart phone charged anyway. And if they are out of cell phone range in this day and age paging them isn't likely to be of much value. By the time they run back down the mountain to use the phone in the small town pub the emergency is over since some doctor near the hospital with a smart phone already responded.
  
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4. Re:lots of advantages by Etcetera · 2019-02-25 08:06 · Score: 2
  
  But if the person already has a working smart phone, what's the point? They are going to keep the smart phone charged anyway. And if they are out of cell phone range in this day and age paging them isn't likely to be of much value. By the time they run back down the mountain to use the phone in the small town pub the emergency is over since some doctor near the hospital with a smart phone already responded.
  Naw, you'd be surprised how crap cell phone coverage can be even in this day and age. Remember hospitals have to work even with degraded service, and if the cell tower near you goes down for some reason you may have 3 bars of 3G coverage for a while instead. Works fine, but go one floor down into the basement and you're at no signal (whereas a pager will get through fine).
  That brings up the other importance: Eliminating common failure modes. If you only have one way of reaching your life-saving employee, dependent on one network and one tech layer, you're not doing safety-critical reliability engineering properly.
  
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5. Re:lots of advantages by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-25 09:17 · Score: 1
  
  It's also the physical significance of the pager itself. You have *the* pager, you are *the* cardiologist on call until someone takes it from you.
  Everyone at the hospital knows x415 will reach the on-call cardiologist's pager (or so says the sheet by every phone if they forget), they don't have to worry about how to navigate a complex system, or making sure you're set as on-call correctly. The person you relieved handed it to you as the sign you were on duty and they were off duty, so he/she isn't wondering if you logged in properly or are still at dinner 40 minutes away as they drive home.
6. Re:lots of advantages by dryeo · 2019-02-25 10:32 · Score: 1
  
  There's still the better reception thing.
  
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7. Re:lots of advantages by demonlapin · 2019-02-25 14:39 · Score: 2
  
  Even with the really amazing battery-saving techniques used in modern smartphones, you can burn through a full battery in a day of call if it's busy enough. Maybe you leave your charger at home by accident and, through a series of odd events, end up stuck at the hospital all day and night. In theory, I could be stuck there from 7 AM Friday to 7 AM Monday without ever getting the chance to leave. In practice, I've never spent more than about 36 hours uninterrupted, and I certainly got a chance to sleep during that time, but I had to stay in-house. By contrast, even a busy pager was good for a month or so on a single AA battery, and when it was dying, you had about 3-4 days to carry out the 30-second swap process for a new one.
  
  I don't carry a pager these days, in a smaller community hospital (~500 beds), where we are all known to the people that need to call us. But when I was at a larger academic hospital, the staff changed all the time. Residents came and went, faculty came and went. If you wanted the anesthesiologist in charge of running things, you just dialed one pager number. It was always the same, regardless of who was on call. No need to look up a call schedule. You either got a faculty member or a final-year resident, and the senior residents always knew who their faculty were in case it got really hairy.
  
  Like the AC below said, handing off the pager really was a momentous thing in its own way, in much the same way that there is an enormously formal ceremony for handing over control of a ship or an airplane. Once you put that in someone else's hands, you are relieved. Until then, you are not. There is no ambiguity about who is responsible: if you're the guy with the pager, you're it.
8. Re:lots of advantages by Bert64 · 2019-02-25 18:40 · Score: 1
  
  Phone chargers aren't some specialised personal item, even the vast majority of phones now use the same standard types of charger. I'm sure in an organization the size of a hospital there will be other people with a compatible charger. Failing that, chargers are cheap so the hospital could supply some for staff who are expected to have their phones charged.
  
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9. Re:lots of advantages by demonlapin · 2019-02-26 04:47 · Score: 1
  
  I can assure you, based on long experience in hospitals, that you don’t let your charger leave your sight if you want to have it at the end of the day. And it can be quite hard just to find enough time where you don’t have to be mobile to get a solid charge. It’s not a totalky insurmountable problem, but it is a problem.
10. Re:lots of advantages by rl117 · 2019-02-26 08:25 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly so. It's not just medical use either. In a big industrial facility doing shift work, you would hand over the pager as part of the handoff between shifts. You were now responsible and accountable. A sizeable physical token is useful because it has meaning, much moreso than a purely electronic system such as a phone app.
Paging Dr. Allcome! by Joe_Dragon · 2019-02-25 06:17 · Score: 1

Paging Dr. Allcome!
Pagers vs SMS by Rastl · 2019-02-25 06:47 · Score: 2

This was a while ago (about 15 I would say) and I managed the IT service desk for a large bank. We used pagers and the ticket system paged on various events. They were necessarily cryptic but the intention was to let the right people know when stuff was going on. The CTO would get paged if email went down, that kind of thing.
It was the dawn of the not-so-smart phone era and the executives got them along with people getting their own flip phones and such. Texting was starting to build. It was a great new world on the horizon. And the executives wanted us to step boldly into it.
Every few months I was asked why we didn't switch away from those old fashioned pagers and use this marvelous new technology. No more cryptic messages! No need to carry two devices! Stop being stuck in the past and move with the times!
I would politely listen to them and tell them (again) that SMS relied on email to get the messages to the towers. So just how I was I going to send a message that email was down if .. I used a system that depended on email to send messages?
It kept happening for years but that TAPI system just kept chugging along and the pagers worked everywhere, even in the more remote areas of the states when cell reception was 'stand on a hill and point your phone in the right direction' level.
It's nowhere near as important as medical professionals needing to be paged but it's an object lesson in using the right tool for the job. In this case the pager system is unlikely to get overloaded when there's a crisis or some other event where everyone is on their mobile phones. It might seem like it's an unnecessary expense but I'm guessing they looked at it like the executives at my bank did - a cost without knowing the value behind it.
1. Re:Pagers vs SMS by thegarbz · 2019-02-25 08:24 · Score: 1
  
  In this case the pager system is unlikely to get overloaded when there's a crisis or some other event where everyone is on their mobile phones.
  The question isn't one of paging vs SMS. There are many alternatives. If anything they would probably switch to SDS messages over TETRA which is what the rest of the UK Emergency services already use via the Airwave service. But even if they did use the public infrastructure it doesn't mean doom and gloom. 3GPP Release 13 includes message and device level prioritization including device preemption. It's something we tested when we were looking to LTE to replace 2-way radio infrastructure and a completely overloaded tower sending out nothing but busy signals will happily boot off those pesky members of the public in order to deliver your high priority message and give you service.
2. Re:Pagers vs SMS by Etcetera · 2019-02-25 08:25 · Score: 1
  
  "SMS relied on email"
  Was?
  In a properly-engineering life-critical situation you'd have an industrial-quality 2g/3g modem device interacting directly with the cell network to send SMS (ideally located in the roof closet with a large antenna on it), but during the mid-2000's email-to-text was often seen as "good enough". Direct web submission gateways became an option, but SMTP whitelists did a pretty good job at handling issues where a provider's web gateway may be unreliable.
  Of course, numeric pagers could reached with a Linux box, a modem, and a POTS line. If you want to remove failure points, a hospital getting POTS service from the CO is about as reliable as you're gonna get. (I recall being quite a bit more worried about the 2.2 kernel back in the day).
  
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  Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
3. Re:Pagers vs SMS by drinkypoo · 2019-02-25 09:14 · Score: 1
  
  I would politely listen to them and tell them (again) that SMS relied on email to get the messages to the towers. So just how I was I going to send a message that email was down if .. I used a system that depended on email to send messages?
  That's not a law of physics, it's an implementation detail. SMS itself doesn't rely on email, nor do paging systems, though both can be used that way. I've been involved with paging both through TAP and through email, and with SMS both directly and through email.
  Using pagers is cool because they don't depend on the cellular network, but it also sucks because using good ones which can ack a message is as expensive as cellular. But if you expect it to work even in an emergency while the cellular network may be down and even if not is probably getting pounded by users, it still makes sense. Therefore, if it makes sense for anyone, it's medical professionals.
  
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  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:The only problem with pagers by UnknowingFool · 2019-02-25 07:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

Yes but what data needs to be encrypted? In this use case, most pagers at best send short messages like phone numbers or text like “Call ER”. I suppose patient information could be sent but rarely do hospitals do that preferring for voice communication because a conversation is far more effective.

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Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Re:Pagers are GREAT! by DickBreath · 2019-02-25 07:52 · Score: 2

Getting rid of outdated pagers, such as more. Use a modern pager such as less because it offers many features.that the UK Health Service might find useful. However 'less' is not useful for sending those picts you mention which might be an important bit of information about the patient's health.

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I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
LPWAN by amorsen · 2019-02-25 08:51 · Score: 1

The pager service could technically be done much cheaper today by the use of LPWAN. This would enable easy competition between LPWAN providers.
Someone "just" has to fund the development of the new devices.

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Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
1. Re:LPWAN by amorsen · 2019-02-25 20:28 · Score: 1
  
  Easier to sniff / log too.
  No. LPWAN has encryption. It may not be amazing, but it's there.
  The pager protocol on the other hand is entirely unencrypted. Any idiot with an SDR can spy on them. The devices are not designed with security in mind, so they are likely to have interesting vulnerabilities if someone sends them unexpected messages.
  Security is actually the best reason to ditch the pagers as soon as possible.
  
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  Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
2. Re:LPWAN by amorsen · 2019-02-26 20:16 · Score: 1
  
  That's nice, but the chances that the NHS are using encrypted paging are pretty slim.
  Also, proprietary encryption is always full of holes.
  
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Story based on ignorance by kenh · 2019-02-25 09:11 · Score: 1

Pagers are the near perfect answer to the needs of medical workers, and very affordable - $5.5/month per user, or about 20ÃÂ/day.
The devices are quicker, more reliable than cellphones, and as a mature technology, costs are fairly trivial.
This politician's entire argument is based on ignorance of the problem, the technology involved, and the low cost of the current solution - it needs to be replaced because it's 'ancient', nothing more.
Think NHS can build an 'app' and roll it out for less than $8.5M? What will be the on-going cost to keep the required app servers up 24x7, with 5 mines of availability (99.999% up-time)?
The $8.5M is cheap, the technology is great, and there is no problem.

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Ken
1. Re:Story based on ignorance by Anne+Thwacks · 2019-02-25 20:52 · Score: 1
  
  with 5 mines of availability
  If you are mining availability with Intel, you are doing it wrong - you need FPGAs!
  
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  Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Common failure modes by Firethorn · 2019-02-25 09:16 · Score: 1

Encountered that at my work. Maybe not life saving, but they transitioned our network/computer help desk to VOIP. What happens when the network goes down?
I mean, we were aware of the issue, but we couldn't reach out to our higher level/vendor supports for assistance, or to our lower level customers to let them know that we were aware of the issue and working on it.

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I don't read AC A human right
1. Re:Common failure modes by Bert64 · 2019-02-25 18:42 · Score: 1
  
  What happens when the network goes down?
  In that case the IT staff would be fully aware of the problem, and would get to spend their time fixing it rather than answering endless calls from users telling them what they already know.
  
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  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Forget the App. by technix4beos · 2019-02-25 10:44 · Score: 1

Why not just put the same hardware technology a pager uses INSIDE the phone? I'm sure Apple or Samsung could easily incorporate Pager radio silicon in their phones.
No?

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user@host$ diff /dev/urandom /dev/uspto
1. Re:Forget the App. by UnknowingFool · 2019-02-25 11:49 · Score: 1
  
  Technically there’s no reason they can’t. However it may costly to add a feature that few people would use onto their SoCs. It is easier not to pursue this market.
  
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  Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Handing Pager to next person - alternate? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-25 11:21 · Score: 1

Folks in hospitals and first responders that I know have pagers often hand the pager to the next person or whoever is filling in for them. This enables system/managment to simply page on-call pager and reach whoever has it. If switching to phonecalls, or phoneapp, then someone/thing has to be constantly updated to know who to contact.
There are a number of places where cell-phone are prohibited, but one-way incoming pagers are allowed. Switching to cell-phone/app would make those area dark/off-limits/blind-spots.
Reliable in emergencies... by sasha328 · 2019-02-25 13:12 · Score: 1

I used to carry a pager for almost 15 years when I was part of our state emergency service in NSW.
The reason we still use them is because of coverage.
Pagers rely on radio transmitters that cover massive areas. They are not subject to emergency mobile signal shutdown during emergencies or congestion periods.
SMS (and email) is much more useful, and we use that as our primary mass communication tool to our members, however, for team leaders and officers we still use pagers as well.
I have had situations where an emergency SMS was not delivered for over an hour due to the fire emergency we were in.
This is not to say that pagers are perfect. I have had missed or garbled messages due to interference (I was working near a phone exchange at the time).
I think pagers are still useful, the problem is the number of providers is shrinking rapidly and that will be the only reason they will disappear.
next up by sad_ · 2019-02-26 00:00 · Score: 1

faxes!

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On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.