Westlake, OH can trace its beginnings back to October 10, 1810, when the Cahoon and Porter families were the first to arrive to set up homesteads. These early settlers cleared the area's dense forests to plant crops and provide pasture for raising horses, cattle and sheep. Later, waterpower from area creeks ran sawmills and gristmills. By 1900, the town had a permanent population of 2,233 and an annual influx of people who owned cottages just to the North on Lake Erie. By 2000, the population had surpassed 31,000. With the population growing, area dispatches needed to mature to meet the needs of the residents in a more efficient way.

At the time, dispatching for fire and EMS was accomplished by switching firemen from active duty to man dispatch positions at their different firehouse PSAPs. It was decided that consolidating individual PSAPs into a regional dispatch would be the best way to use resources, thus freeing firemen to respond to fires.

"In deciding which equipment to buy, we looked at all Tier 1 CAD companies," says Communications Supervisor Nick Pishnery of the Westshore Dispatch Center. "What makes Positron the best is that it offers total redundancy. If there is a failure at any one position, you don't lose everything and wind up having to dispatch by hand."

Located in Saint John West Shore Hospital, the Westshore Dispatch Center went live with Positron's suite of fully-integrated call handling and incident management software, including Power 911, Power CAD, Power MAP and Power MIS, on March 13, 2006. "Power 911 is very user friendly," proclaims Mr. Pishnery. "We like that it's so simple to operate. Everybody working in the dispatch picked it up very easily."

Power CAD is a configurable Computer Aided Dispatch system providing complete resource and incident management for single and multi-agency environments. Power CAD provides dispatchers with both graphical drag-and-drop and command-line control that increases dispatcher efficiency and accuracy.

Power MIS is an advanced reporting and analysis tool that provides a comprehensive view of PSAP wireline, wireless and dispatch activity, and personnel performance. Power MIS provides an extremely easy-to-use graphical user interface that allows you to refine your report parameters and see the results immediately.

When asked about Positron's people, Mr. Pishnery goes on to add, "They're all great. They all give 110%. They do a tremendous job."

Positron is proud to welcome Westshore to the family.