Pagers continue to live in hospitals in part because they work where cellphones won’t. Hospitals have cellular and Wi-Fi dead zones, particularly in spots where walls have been built to stop X-ray exposure. Pagers get the same kind of range as an FM radio station, and signals go to multiple satellites instead of just one, as cellphones do.
About a month on a aaa I recall. Independent of how many texts were received it seemed. Guess it had to amplify and demodulate every bit of noise that broke squelch.
I recall reading somewhere (IIRC it was a Motorola patented method? Probably expired by this point) that one brand / com method involved a stead, slow / long sequence at the start of the analog signal expressly as _the_ thing that terminals woke up on, started to process on, and then could go back to sleep right away if it wasn't a device match.
It's still very very very widely used in Fire and EMS - listen to any scanner and you'll hear "tones" "dropping" before any dispatch. Motorola Quik-Call is most common around here (there's a sample at this page called 'Tone and voice paging example') - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_calling
In my area, by and large (smaller volunteer departments might just have a 'department' tone), each dispatchable unit has a unique tone (usually two separate tones) and the pager is programmed with a decoder, "if I hear X Hz for x ms, followed by Y Hz for y ms...". Then we will have 'utility' tones, that may not dispatch a unit, but provide information. For example, here a medical call is likely toned as:
[engine tone] [generic tone for private ambulance company] [ems utility tone]
so you'll get a stream of six tones (well, the utility tones have slightly different rules, so our EMS tone is "beep beep beep" while our Fire tone is "hilo hilo hilo".
There can be problems with the current hybrid state of things, though. Here in my county, dispatch is supposed to use the new phone app method AND tone notifications so that Ye Olde Radios still work. But they don't always remember to do both ...
Interesting, had a pager in the early 90s and worked in a hospital. But it was used primarily for picking up extra shifts and occasional friend communication.
Was a small, clear motorola that I was proud of and so kept it for years. Believe I got rid of it finally ten years ago and regret a bit now.
At one point tried coming up with a numeric code to text the alphabet for short texts but it was difficult as you can imagine. :-p
They came with a little codebook and kids would extend with their own codes. EDIT: It also came with a voicemail that you could access with a freecall so you could leave each other voice messages too.
When "100% working no matter what" is a core requirement - military, medicine, etc - you should expect slow technological change and lots of maintenance of the current status quo until it becomes untenable.
Pagers are also popular among people who work in secure areas (in the sense of national security, e.g., at national labs) because they are one-way so you can bring them inside; they receive information but cannot transmit it out.
Keep the pager in the secure area. Turn it on when you enter, turn it off and hand it back in when you exit.
Also, I’ve been to places where they do things like “no external laptops; however you can bring your phone in-we will cover the camera with security tape, and check the tape on the way back out”. Obviously that is not what they do for classified stuff, but not everything sensitive is classified (indeed, some governments have a category “sensitive but unclassified”). And some private sector entities copy aspects of public sector security, but rarely to the same extreme, which can produce similar rules.
Yes, that was their policy. I won’t say their name, but it was the headquarters of a major financial services firm in South Korea
One of my Korean colleagues had this theory-senior executive ranks in Korea are dominated by former military officers, and as a result the corporate culture is heavily influenced by the military - including an obsession with countermeasures against corporate espionage. In practice, I don’t they were doing anything worth spying on, while the extreme security rules were a big burden on developer productivity
I believe the rules are aimed to keep people with clearance from being foolish, risky, or bending the rules, not to prevent dedicated spies. I don't think they're getting patted down.
The encryption isn't too much of an issue, you're usually just paging a phone number or a code like '911' from your family who otherwise have no other way to reach you.
That’s what I was talking about as well. A pager is the only mobile communication device allowed in those spaces so it’s impossible for a family member to contact you when you’re walking around otherwise.
The biggest concern in these environments isn't information reaching the people inside - it's those people extricating that information (intentionally or otherwise). So having a system where e.g. some scientist's family can tell them they need to call right away is super helpful and not a huge security risk because they have to go through the process of leaving before they can actually contact them. There's no [obvious] way to MITM the pager and get it to extricate any data.
"The T5 supports message encryption using the industry standard AES?128* encryption algorithm. Each device is programmed with a unique key. Messages are encrypted as they enter the Spok network and are sent over the air to the device where they are decrypted for display to the user."
Dumb question: how do these work? Specifically, how does the network know where to transmit the page, and whether to stop retransmission (if the pager is offline when originally paged).
It doesn’t, one-way really does mean one-way. Pagers are broadcast over an entire region. Regions can be as small as metro areas or as large as the continental United States.
True one way pagers only receive if they're on at the time a page is sent out. Think a radio with a transcriber, if it's on when the page is sent it records it and plays it's notification sound. There are two-way pagers that could respond to and acknowledge pages.
I am a hospitalist and we still occasionally use pagers, but they are not reliable like people assume. Dropped/missed pages happen, probably at about 1-5% frequency. The battery life is great but still my phone can be recharged and is much less wasteful with battery use.
There is a major trend to transition to hipaa compliant text messaging apps which work much better and efficiently. Some are built into EMRs.
I work in a hospital; the system I'm in finally deactivated our physical pagers last week.
One thing that I really liked about pagers was the social element. If I receive a page to a physical pager while talking to a patient, they have no question about whether the incoming message is of a clinical nature. In contrast, when I get a message and glance at my phone, it's not possible for them to know. I'm sure they give me the benefit of the doubt, but with a pager that wasn't necessary.
My mother is a GP (in Australia). Many times I have interrupted one of her consultations with a patient by calling her. She tells me she is with a patient and keeps the conversation brief. I’ve never experienced that from the patient’s viewpoint, but I wouldn’t be upset at the doctor if I did. I’m a parent too, if my kid was calling me I’d be inclined to pick up just in case it was something serious.
Last time we took our son to see the paediatrician, he spent 5 minutes on the phone talking about another patient-the hospital called him to ask what to do about some seriously ill infant. That didn’t bother us at all.
What you are saying totally makes sense. A phone call is a brief, observable interruption where you can sort of follow along with how close it is to ending.
The issue with getting rid of pagers is that it means people are now texting using a special app, rather than calling. (I should have been more clear about that detail.) I think that staring quietly at your phone is a little bit more fraught than answering a page or a call.
I totally agree. I am checking my phone in patient rooms all the time now to look at epic messages in case they are urgent. I have to say the good ole days of pagers were much better.
When I’ve had to be oncall, I’ve always preferred pagers to SMS or phone apps. It’s a pain in the ass to keep my phone on me at all times and not be able to silence it. If I ever have another job that requires oncall I will probably buy a cheap Android burner and expense it rather than using my personal phone.
We still use pagers for emergency response alerting (Victoria, Australia). It's a dedicated, reliable alerting system that ensures the alert goes out between the emergency call takers and first responders.
It's reliable partly because it's so basic - it's a "one-way" broadcast network, and only operates at 1200bps (IIRC). They're not trying to build a network to serve hundreds of Mbps over duplex data connections so everyone can download their favourite cat pics. The network is built to cover 98% of the state by area, mobile networks cover less than that by population.
As a volunteer unit, we use mobile apps to augment our response (ie, hit green on our phone to indicate we're responding, red if you're not), but the primary alerting system is still the pager. The amount of people that turn their pager off then act surprised when they miss an alert because they don't get the difference is fun though.
I work for a hospital and we just phased out our pagers this past year for some staff. Honestly, I am glad they are gone. I hated carrying the extra device. But I see the advantage for physicians. Pagers absolutely work everywhere.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadIt's still very very very widely used in Fire and EMS - listen to any scanner and you'll hear "tones" "dropping" before any dispatch. Motorola Quik-Call is most common around here (there's a sample at this page called 'Tone and voice paging example') - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_calling
In my area, by and large (smaller volunteer departments might just have a 'department' tone), each dispatchable unit has a unique tone (usually two separate tones) and the pager is programmed with a decoder, "if I hear X Hz for x ms, followed by Y Hz for y ms...". Then we will have 'utility' tones, that may not dispatch a unit, but provide information. For example, here a medical call is likely toned as:
[engine tone] [generic tone for private ambulance company] [ems utility tone]
so you'll get a stream of six tones (well, the utility tones have slightly different rules, so our EMS tone is "beep beep beep" while our Fire tone is "hilo hilo hilo".
Was a small, clear motorola that I was proud of and so kept it for years. Believe I got rid of it finally ten years ago and regret a bit now.
At one point tried coming up with a numeric code to text the alphabet for short texts but it was difficult as you can imagine. :-p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuBXphPuEuk
They came with a little codebook and kids would extend with their own codes. EDIT: It also came with a voicemail that you could access with a freecall so you could leave each other voice messages too.
It was pretty awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9dxWf0yoj4
Also, I’ve been to places where they do things like “no external laptops; however you can bring your phone in-we will cover the camera with security tape, and check the tape on the way back out”. Obviously that is not what they do for classified stuff, but not everything sensitive is classified (indeed, some governments have a category “sensitive but unclassified”). And some private sector entities copy aspects of public sector security, but rarely to the same extreme, which can produce similar rules.
One of my Korean colleagues had this theory-senior executive ranks in Korea are dominated by former military officers, and as a result the corporate culture is heavily influenced by the military - including an obsession with countermeasures against corporate espionage. In practice, I don’t they were doing anything worth spying on, while the extreme security rules were a big burden on developer productivity
https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/au/security/news/vulnerabil...
> Pagers are also popular among people who work in secure areas (in the sense of national security, e.g., at national labs)
https://pagersdirect.net/collections/alpha-numeric-pagers/pr...
However, there seem to be other weaker links in that chain (like the email that's being sent to the host).
There is a major trend to transition to hipaa compliant text messaging apps which work much better and efficiently. Some are built into EMRs.
One thing that I really liked about pagers was the social element. If I receive a page to a physical pager while talking to a patient, they have no question about whether the incoming message is of a clinical nature. In contrast, when I get a message and glance at my phone, it's not possible for them to know. I'm sure they give me the benefit of the doubt, but with a pager that wasn't necessary.
Last time we took our son to see the paediatrician, he spent 5 minutes on the phone talking about another patient-the hospital called him to ask what to do about some seriously ill infant. That didn’t bother us at all.
The issue with getting rid of pagers is that it means people are now texting using a special app, rather than calling. (I should have been more clear about that detail.) I think that staring quietly at your phone is a little bit more fraught than answering a page or a call.
It's reliable partly because it's so basic - it's a "one-way" broadcast network, and only operates at 1200bps (IIRC). They're not trying to build a network to serve hundreds of Mbps over duplex data connections so everyone can download their favourite cat pics. The network is built to cover 98% of the state by area, mobile networks cover less than that by population.
As a volunteer unit, we use mobile apps to augment our response (ie, hit green on our phone to indicate we're responding, red if you're not), but the primary alerting system is still the pager. The amount of people that turn their pager off then act surprised when they miss an alert because they don't get the difference is fun though.