Built inside Australian general practice, because the button under the desk kept failing.
Duress Alert comes from IT4GP, an Australian IT company founded in Victoria in 2007. For years IT4GP ran the computers inside medical centres, which is the only reason this product exists. The duress button was not a product idea. It came from watching what actually happened at reception.
- Founded
- Victoria, 2007
- Built for
- Clinics and front desks
- Designed
- In house, Australia
- Based
- Melbourne
Where it came from
By 2014 IT4GP was managing IT for enough healthcare sites to see the same problem in all of them. Every site needed a duress alarm to meet its safety and accreditation obligations, and most used the same thing: a battery or USB button stuck under a desk.
Those buttons were almost never tested. A year would pass, nobody pressed one, and the first real test came at the worst possible moment, when somebody actually needed help. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes staff found out the hard way that it did not.
That is why Duress Alert sits on the screen. A button you can see is a button you know is working. The green dot in the corner is not decoration, it is daily proof that the system is live, and every other design decision follows from it. Duress Alert was designed and built in house, and tested across the clinics IT4GP already ran.
Visible by default
A hardwired button tells you nothing until the moment you need it. Duress Alert shows a green dot on every screen, every day, so staff know it is live before anything happens.
Built by the people who ran the IT
IT4GP supported these sites, so the rollout was designed around what a small practice can actually manage: no new hardware, no rewiring, and an install measured in minutes per computer.
Australian, and still here
Founded in Victoria in 2007 and still Melbourne based. Our address and hours are below, and a person answers.
What customers tell us
“We had three separate incidents involving aggression toward our GPs within a few months. Since installing Duress Alert, staff have used it to defuse situations before they escalated.”
Liz Baker, Practice Manager, Perth
“With ever growing vaccination rates we were inevitably going to see delays in other areas, our head receptionist was a sole ranger, managing our front desk alone, with frustration for vaccination bookings which were running behind she would often be verbally abused by patients. The final straw for us was when she was spat on by a patient and had to physically shout across our clinic for help, luckily a helpful patient was there to calm the situation, our head receptionist was clearly shaken. Since installing it she now feels a lot safer.”
Sanjay Gultibe, Sydney
“We run a busy solicitor practice and have always used the fixed button systems under the desk, with clients and people we are pursuing for justice sometimes the situation can get heated, with frequent visits of the pursuant to our offices we had used our Duress Alert system on several occasions. With a sizable divorce case on the table and after some earlier correspondence our front of house team were met by a gentleman bearing a baseball bat, he was very frustrated by our communication, our receptionist hit the Duress button under the desk only to realise some time later the button was broken! Since installing the Duress Alert, she now knows, if it’s green, we can see her.”
Sally Anderton, Victoria
Where to find us
Duress Alert, by IT4GP
Level 8, 99 Queen Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia
Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:30pm Melbourne time.
sales@duressalert.app
Tell us about your site.
Tell us your team size and setting, and we’ll show you how Duress Alert works on your own desks and what a rollout looks like. We get back to you quickly.
