Download PDF - International SOS

More documents

Recommendations

Info

All hands on deck at the first International SOS alarm center Dr Roger Farrow has been with International SOS since 1987. He first started on a locum basis when he was Commanding Officer at the New Zealand Military Hospital in Singapore and is now Chairman of the Corporate Assistance Department. FOR 18 YEARS, Dr Farrow has been closely involved with the development of the International SOS alarm center network. Here he looks back at the early days, at what has changed – and what has stayed the same. “Back when we first started, it was all hands on deck”, he says. “Arnaud [Vaissié] and Pascal [Rey-Herme] were involved with every case, with Pascal and I always on call to give medical assistance to clients and undertake medical evacuations. This was in the days before mobile phones, when we each carried pagers and bags of 10-cent coins ready to rush to the nearest public phone. I remember sharing our very first Ericsson mobile phone. It was huge, and the networks weren’t great, but even then we were leading edge in terms of telecoms and technology.” Early days Sharing and swapping apartments and traveling between Jakarta and Singapore, Dr Farrow and Dr Rey-Herme were on constant call at the Singapore and Jakarta alarm centers when in 1989 the Hong Kong alarm center opened and additional medical staff came on board. “There were a lot of mining and infrastructure companies in Asia, and a large population of expatriates and families. Medical facilities were certainly not what they are today, but we were doing frequent medical evacuations so the level of expertise was high and the process very efficient. We learnt right from the start about the importance of harnessing the complementary skills of both expatriate and national staff – just as we continue to do globally today. This mix of expertise has been a key element in the company’s success.” Zaleha Hassan also worked at the Singapore alarm center in the early days. “Back then we did everything ourselves”, she remembers. “We rushed to embassies to apply for visas, picked up medication, filled up 14 INTERNATIONAL SOS
FIRST ALARM CENTER oxygen tanks locally, and went to the airport to check in patients ahead of repatriation.” Pioneering evacuations Modern aviation has made the medical transportation of patients faster and less stressful. Roger Farrow continues: “I remember in 1988 we completed a pioneering evacuation of an extremely sick patient by air ambulance from Singapore to a hospital in London. This was before the advent of the non-stop long haul 747 400 aircraft and when there were few air ambulance aircraft available. We used a Lear 36 to make the transcontinental flight, stopping at Madras, Abu Dhabi and then Lanaka in Cyprus before finally landing at Heathrow. Stopping in the middle of the night, while the aircraft was being refueled needed careful planning. With little of the SERVING INTERNATIONAL SOS’S JAPANESE CLIENTS AND MEMBERS INTERNATIONAL SOS delivers services specifically designed and tailored for its Japanese clients and members. Lisa Tan joined International SOS in 1988. She spent two years setting up and upgrading International SOS's alarm center operations in Seoul and Hong Kong. In 1991 she returned to the Singapore alarm center as Operations Manager. She remembers how the International SOS Japanese Desk first came about. "Our Japanese clients and members have always been important to us. They were the first clients in Asia willing to invest in our services despite medical assistance being almost unknown in this region in the late 1980's", she explains. "Both AIU Insurance Company and former Mitsui Marine & Fire Insurance Company, now known as Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company, were the first Japanese insurance companies to show a keen interest in including medical services to give added value to their insurance products. Both companies have grown to become key clients and our business partners in many ways. "In 1992 we reached another milestone when Tokio Marine chose us as their appointed assistance company for Asia Pacific. Before choosing International SOS, Tokio Marine sent teams to Singapore, “The soul of the company, its humanity and compassion, have been preserved” ROGER FARROW, INTERNATIONAL SOS Jakarta, Hong Kong and Brisbane to audit our operations. We were able to demonstrate our consistency of approach. More importantly, we demonstrated our understanding of Asia and the Japanese market, and showed intimate local and cultural knowledge. The key win for us was our geographically balanced network, which met the expectations and requirements of Tokio Marine in Asia Pacific at that time. Today, we provide services to Tokio Marine on a global basis. "In 1993, we set up the Japanese desk at the Singapore alarm center, dealing exclusively with assistance to our Japanese clients and members. This was the start of the fully-fledged Japanese service department that has continued till this day in Tokyo, serving more than 90% of Japanese non-life insurers and all our global members from Japan. "International SOS has always believed in the importance of providing services to customers in their own language and in accordance with their own customs and traditions, even when they're overseas. The attention to detail and commitment we demonstrated to our Japanese clients in the early days is still fundamental to the service we offer today, even though we have grown such a lot in the past 20 years." sophisticated medical equipment available today, we had to take the utmost care to monitor the patient to make sure he remained stable through each stage of the flight.” On another occasion, a Singaporean boy had to be flown back urgently from Kota Kinabalu, where the airport was already closed. Dr Pascal Rey-Herme asked Lisa Tan, who was the only Malaysian in the company at that time, to talk to the Malaysian authorities to convince them to open the airport especially for the mercy flight. The airport authorities readily agreed to do so once the urgency of the situation was explained. Soul of the company The years since have seen the rapid growth of International SOS, with hundreds of new staff joining and new alarm centers and clinics opening throughout the world. This might have meant a lot of change – particularly for longer-serving members of the team. Dr Farrow doesn’t agree. “Yes, today’s alarm centers are incredibly efficient operations, with systems and technology that we wouldn’t have recognized even 10 years ago. But the heart of what we do is the same. The soul of the company, its humanity and compassion, have been preserved. “I always liken Pascal and Arnaud to the queen bee in a bee hive. Just as the queen bee affects and directs the behavior of the whole hive, so in the same way Pascal and Arnaud’s strong medical and personal ethics and their passion for excellence have shaped this company and the people who work in it. I’ve been strongly influenced by them both since the day I first met them. And in turn those longer serving members of the company are passing onto those who joined later, the same values and standards. A hands-on approach “What is so important and so unusual for a large company like ours, is that Pascal and Arnaud are still directly involved in medical and operational decision making. There is no serious medical case which senior management are unaware of. What we all value – and the reason so many of us stay with International SOS – is the opportunity to work for a compassionate, medically driven, ethical company. “In another 20 years we’ll probably look back at 2005 and say that what we’re doing now was pioneering. It’s all a question of perspective. But it is extraordinary to see just how far we’ve come in such a relatively short time.” ■ HOTLINE - ANNIVERSARY EDITION 15
Page 1 and 2: hotline International SOS Worldwide
Page 3 and 4: 04 08 10 12 PIONEERING A NEW SERVIC
Page 5 and 6: A passion for quality care and serv
Page 7 and 8: FIRST EVACUATION A double success W
Page 9 and 10: FIRST CLIENT Security services Four
Page 11 and 12: AIR AMBULANCES air care units in th
Page 13: FIRST CLINIC Reception of the Inter
Page 17 and 18: CORPORATE ASSISTANCE DEPARTMENT Str
Page 19 and 20: SECURITY EVACUATIONS Out Everybody
Page 21 and 22: MEMBERSHIP More than an emergency s
Page 23 and 24: ONLINE enormous, with 120,000 trave
Page 25 and 26: FIRST MASS EVACUATION “20 hours f
Page 27 and 28: REMOTE SITE SERVICES where IN THE W
Page 29 and 30: Water sampling as part of a malaria
Page 31 and 32: OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH designed to sui
Page 33 and 34: GOVERNMENTS & NGO AGAINST ALL ODDS
Page 35 and 36: IN-FLIGHT SERVICES Safety in the sk
Page 37 and 38: PATIENT SUPPORT “Non-compliance w
Page 39 and 40: GLOBAL SYSTEMS WHEN International S

Download PDF - International SOS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?