Alertive - communication tool or verb? A survey of maternity service clinicians before and after introduction of a replacement ‘bleep’ system

Alex Boone and Guy Jackson.

Royal Berkshire Hospital (RBH), Reading, U.K.

 

Introduction

Pagers, or bleeps, were introduced to UK hospitals in the 1950s. These systems transmit via radio signal and only allow for one way communication of a short numeric message. They are increasingly expensive to maintain, suffer from failed transmissions, and have limited auditability [1]. The use of bleeps persists despite modern alternatives. Patient safety issues from failed bleep communication are widespread, but highest in the maternity service, hence our focus on this area. In July 2025 we introduced Alertive as our new communications system at RBH. Alertive is a real-time digital communication platform accessible via mobile phone [2]. We turned off our legacy ‘bleep’ system in September 2025. We surveyed maternity staff pre and post implementation to evaluate the introduction of this alternative communication system.

Methods

In June 2025 we surveyed MDT staff working in maternity services asking how well the bleep system worked in both emergency and routine situations; we also asked what could be improved and for additional comments. We re-surveyed in February 2026 following the introduction of Alertive.

 

Results

Table 1 – Summary of survey data prior to and after introduction of Alertive.

Survey number	Number of respondents	% of respondents that believed patient safety was compromised ‘always’ or ‘frequently’	Mean average rating (out of 10) for reliability	Mean average rating (out of 10) for how well the bleep system works for emergency calls	Mean average rating (out of 10) for how well the bleep system works for routine calls
Survey 1	54	48.2%	4.4	6.2	4.8
Survey 2	48	4.2%	8.06	7.53	8.21

Table Legend - Survey 1: staff opinion regarding the legacy bleep communication system. Survey 2: staff opinion 6 months after the introduction of Alertive.

 

Discussion

We have now been using Alertive instead of the traditional ‘bleeps’ for 6 months. The planning was extensive and involved representation from many different parts of the organisation. As of February 2026, we now have 4467 users, who have generated 109,704 alerts, and 627,932 messages. Our survey demonstrates excellent engagement and positivity for the new system. These data suggest significant benefits of Alertive over our legacy system in terms of reliability and patient safety when making both emergency and routine communications. We have a new verb in our hospital: “Just Alertive me if you need me”.

 

References

 

1. https://www.htworld.co.uk/news/time-to-replace-bleeps-for-good-inf22/
2. https://alertive.co.uk/