Delivering cameraphone photos from 911 callers

What if someone calling 911 could send a picture from their camera phone?

"PowerPhone , a leader in 9-1-1 training and technology, has unveiled a new system for delivering cell phone photos from 9-1-1 callers right to call handlers.

Technology is changing the rules when it comes to emergency response," said Chris Salafia, PowerPhone's president and CEO. "Citizens are now the eyes and ears for our 9-1-1 operators -- and camera phone photos are going to be an important part of improving safety and security. "

PowerPhone's CPD system works like this:

A citizen calls from his cell phone to report an emergency or suspicious activity -- let's say he's spotted a missing child who the police issued an Amber Alert for. The caller dials 9-1-1 to report the sighting and says he can send a picture of the child for verification. The call handler sends an e-mail message to the caller's cell phone from PowerPhone's Total Response® Computer Aided Call Handling(TM) software. The caller then replies to this message with the photo attached. Total Response stores the photo in the incident record for easy reference." [via Yahoo Finance]

emily | 6:07 PM | How people and businesses are using cameraphones |
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