As our participants adopted this new model of two-way communication, 86% that reported in the exit survey stated they saw increases in communication and productivity in virtually all aspects of an unfolding disaster situation.
"We have been working with Westlake using this new model of messaging with the acknowledgement function for about a year now. It is a vital part of our operation every day to now be able to monitor and track emergency messages and their responses for our mobile work force both within our department and across other departments."
Sergeant Mark Bowron
9-1-1 Coordinator
Dayton, Ohio Police Department

The premise/functionality of the new system is excellent. The devices became an added device to everyone's belt.
Tom Ruffini, Captain
College Park Volunteer Fire Department.

93% of participants reported that they were unable to guarantee a wireless device received a message (X2 [1, 439]= 328.18, [p< .01]); 96% of all respondents ( X2 (1, 439) = 370.95, [p< .01]) stated that prior to participation in the study, they were unable to track and confirm that field personnel received emergency messages. Although both of these statistics are significant, there is a difference between guaranteeing that a device received a message, and that an actual person received a message.
Many of the larger wireless service providers that support two-way messaging offer the dispatcher the ability to track that their devices (phones, pagers, PDAs, etc.) have received a message. This works via a capability for the device to send a small acknowledgement message back indicating that a particular message was received. Our experience has shown that in emergency based responding, this is a much less valuable function than actually having the person holding the device respond (sometimes with additional information).