Compliance, Protocols and Industry Standards.

Following our ISO 9001 quality management systems re-certification in late September we decided to bring some more focus to Quality, one of our core company values. 

Alongside the quality assurance processes we adhere to, it is also important to acknowledge the regulatory compliance standards, reporting protocols and industry guidelines that we meet. These play a key role both for ourselves and within the wider telecare industry, assuring high quality products and services are provided to vulnerable end users.

When you consider the requirements to meeting regulatory compliance standards, reporting protocols and industry specific standards there are a few major benefits:

Confidence, consistency and safeguarding: adherence provides a level of reassurance about how a product or solution will operate. While also reducing risks against product failures, operational issues, safety hazards, or legal liabilities.  

Industry standards set benchmarks for quality, safety, and performance. Meeting these standards ensures that our products undergo rigorous testing and validation, guaranteeing a certain level of quality and reliability. Established protocols ensure consistent and accurate reporting of data.

It’s important to realise the while many markets share similar requirements and standards, there are several differences between the global markets that Chiptech supply products into. As such, we ensure independent testing by recognised testing authorities to the relevant standards per market wherever applicable. Chiptech Technical Specifications for each product (found in the web portal) list the relevant standards that we comply with, and we provide a certificate copy of each of the tests undertaken independently, along with a declaration of conformance by the lead engineer. We also endeavour to share the best practice learned from one market into another, so higher requirements in one market are translated across, benefiting all.

Interoperability, efficiency and training: working with recognised practices and processes enables more systems to be connected together. Adhering to standards and protocols means solutions can be tested, and assessed against each other, enabling a like for like comparison of performance. We are privileged as a Telecare / PERS industry to have dedicated groups of talented individuals from a range of perspectives involved in working groups that consider the operations, processes and practices to benefit the end user and ensure best practice is promoted and adopted by suppliers and service providers alike. 

Interoperability is particularly important for Chiptech products communication into different software systems. Implementing a recognised reporting protocol enables flexibility and provides our customers the ability to choose between different software offerings, or change the systems they use. It also enables employees to be trained effectively on these protocols, so multiple products from different vendors can be handled in a similar manner, improving operational readiness.

Chiptech products can communicate using several different protocols depending on where their communications are directed. The reporting protocols used include variants of Contact ID, SCAIP and Chiptech’s own GPOX formats for location data. Configuration files are used to establish the which protocols are used and can be updated to change the destination reports are directed to, or the format used, providing flexibility in monitoring options.

Ultimately, Chiptech’s journey is not just about meeting regulatory requirements but about exceeding our customer and end user expectations. Using recognised standard and protocols provides us a solid platform to build innovative technology that delivers value. As we continue to innovate, our customer and their end users can rest assured that Chiptech remains a trusted supplier of quality personal safety products and software.