Rural Emergency Medical Communications Demonstration Project

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA) assigns CISA with the responsibilities of promoting the ability of emergency response providers and relevant government officials to continue to communicate in the event of disasters, fostering the development of interoperable emergency communications capabilities, and promoting the development of standard operating procedures and best practices for using interoperable emergency communications capabilities for incident response. The HSA also assigns CISA with the responsibility to develop and update a National Emergency Communications Plan (NECP) to support and promote the ability of emergency response providers and relevant government officials to continue to communicate in the event of disasters. To carry out these responsibilities, CISA established the REMCDP to make cooperative agreements to non-federal entities to pursue rural emergency medical communications demonstration projects to meet various program objectives: (1) enhancing current statewide or regional emergency communications systems to address NECP implementation gaps and deliver rural medical care and services; (2) developing trainings and exercises to enable first responders and personnel to effectively use emergency medical communications system and equipment; (3) collaborating with whole community representatives to support NECP activities; (4) collaborating with state leaders to address the adoption of broadband communications to supplement current communications systems; (5) experimenting with innovative solutions to ensure emergency responders and medical practitioners can communicate in various geographies, operating conditions, and scenarios; and (6) identifying, documenting, and sharing lessons learned and best practices.