Blue Shoe Technologies Inc. delivers Timesaving, Life-Saving
Visual Communications Aide to Ft. Bragg Emergency First Responders
August 5, 2005, Fayetteville, North Carolina-- Blue
Shoe Technologies, Inc., a Durham NC based IT professional services firm,
delivered 250 First Responders Edition Visual Communications Aide (VCA)
booklets to Ft. Bragg’s USASOC (US Army Special Operations Command)
on August 5, 2005. The booklets utilize imagery to enable critical, timely,
two-way nonverbal communication where language and cultural barriers exist,
and were enthusiastically received by Ft. Bragg’s First Responder
unit.
“This can help save lives, “ stated Dr. Jorge Phillips, Blue Shoe’s business manager on the VCA project. He adds, “When you have a critical situation, people are hurting and First Responders to the scene need to quickly assess the situation. With a language barrier in place, this adds complexity. These booklets will save time and allow Emergency Responders to better communicate with people during traumatic events.”
Relying on the age-old “talky pointy” method employed
by military personnel for years, a VCA is a simple durable paper card
containing numerous printed illustrations that use graphics and occasionally
text. A VCA card exemplifies a variety of situations that may arise
in a particular environmental or personnel deployment setting. Each
illustration in a VCA card is intended to be used to non-verbally communicate
questions, requests or commands, by simply pointing to it while showing
the card to a listener and using body language to reinforce communication
for action.
A sample VCA card from the Blue Shoe booklet is shown at right:
The USASOC, who has used paper-based VCAs for some time, in its contract with Blue Shoe Technologies set the objective of addressing the issues of cost, distribution, creation, and modification. The paper-based cards, while effective, are costly to produce, require time to distribute, and cannot easily be modified or updated. The Army contracted with Blue Shoe Technologies Inc. to develop a web-based, globally deployable VCA system for the creation and modification of field driven VCAs, incorporating best practices as they evolved in the field.
“Sometimes field personnel resort to drawing their own stick figures to address situations as they occur, “ explains Blue Shoe’s VCA business manager, Dr. Jorge Phillips. “We wanted to give them a way to create on the fly in the field, and using a web-based system with a searchable library of images helps makes this possible. It also brings the field practices back into the library for the benefit of all the system’s users.”
The 16-page booklets were produced from layouts that were created utilizing Blue Shoe’s VCA system. The system includes the following features:
- Platform-independent Graphical User Interface (GUI).
- VCA system server component that includes a relational database of VCA elements, dictionaries, layout templates, graphics and textual media, and printable VCA cards. The server supports LAN or Internet client connections from authoring, viewing and administrative clients. Documents are represented in XML structured format in the relational database backend. The system architecture allows using any relational database (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and Cloudscape) by suitably changing a simple adapter module in the server component. This allows maximum flexibility for deploying at whatever price-performance-functionality point is desired.
- Web-based authoring component that enables users to construct VCA cards using a library of card layouts, and user accessible databases containing image graphics, clipart, textual objects and related media. VCA provides a Blue Shoe-developed graphical editing interface similar in complexity to commercial drawing and presentation software. The user interface for authoring is intuitive and simple, and requires minimal training for effective use. The authoring software also enables display, modification and reuse of VCA stored materials, as well as keyword classification for later retrieval.
- Web-enabled browser-based VCA card viewer. This software is the delivery vehicle for VCA content. The viewer enables users to search for stored VCA cards according to a collection of categories, browse through the resulting collection of displayable VCA cards, select one or more of interest and if desired, print them on any attached printer device either in color or black and white.
- Printing interface that allows high quality printing of VCA content from a browser in a variety of page sizes of use to field personnel. Printable output is generated automatically in PDF from internal system document representations.
- Web-based VCA system administrator interface, with functionality to setup and configure VCA printable card and media databases, create and remove users, assign access privileges to the system, and other related functionality.
- VCA acquisition component that supports asynchronous e-mail submission of new VCA cards and elements. This component enables submission, categorization and indexed storage from either field personnel or geographically remote content-creation facilities.
The USASOC contract was a “proof of concept” project, and was funded by USASOC SOFLO, AMC FAST, and BCDL, Ft. Huachuca. Blue Shoe Technologies has plans to further develop its VCA solution set to market to other organizations in the areas of disaster management and recovery.
Blue Shoe Technologies Inc is an innovative IT professional services company, specializing in Communications Triage™ solutions to assist organizations with managing and allocating limited resources for optimum efficiency in information and knowledge discovery, classification and transformation tasks. Blue Shoe’s primary clients are the US Government and DOD. Over its ten-year history, Blue Shoe has steadily built successful long-term relationships with its customers based on delivering quality results, collaboratively planned in partnership with its clients. Blue Shoe is a leader in Communications Triage™ solutions, specifically in the areas of foreign language processing, high-volume transactional systems, visual communication, and information retrieval.
For more information, or a demonstration of the VCA system, call (919) 403-SHOE (919-403-7463), or email ct@blueshoe.com.
Media contact: Diane Currier
(919) 403-7463 ext. 1106
diane@blueshoe.com
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