Obviously numeric and alpha numeric pagers have their place in the communications market for business and technical professionals, families, teenagers, and educational institutions. But do we stop to realize the role such tools play in saving human life?

In the United States, a nationwide team approach known as "rapid response" to medical emergencies - or potential emergencies - helps decrease mortality rates for patients who have cardiac or respiratory conditions. Pagers play an important part in these procedures.

Doctors in Europe and the United States are looking into nationwide systems to help remind patients to take their medicines, using such technology as email, cell phones and pager warnings. In New Zealand alone, as many as 700 annual cardiac patients could be saved if they took their medicine as prescribed.

The immediate transport of donor organs is often facilitated by the use of pagers in a team effort to relay critical information to the right place at the right moment., while an organ is in transit.

The U.S. Search and Rescue Task Force uses group pagers to contact volunteers immediately when they are needed. Chief officers activate the group pagers all at the same time, relaying necessary location and transport information instantly, thus saving hours that might be wasted in rounding everyone up.

Other search and rescue groups who work with canines keep their pagers on them at all times and their backpacks nearby. Be it a hurricane, a missing child, a climbing accident victim - pagers play a critical part in this kind of work. These volunteers WANT to be "on call" and easily found, and pagers make it possible.

The media is full of international stories in which signals from cell phones and pagers have helped technicians to locate victims of major disasters. The use of sirens to call firemen to duty has been replaced in some communities - and supplemented in others - by the implementation of home monitors and pagers which firemen carry.

Educational institutions have implemented plans for evacuating disabled students and staff in case of an emergency, such as a fire, and pagers are a major tool in these plans, enabling them to keep open communications with disabled parties who need special help and attention during such a crisis.

Police in London use a pager-alert system with local businesses - to warn public in the event of bomb alerts, terrorist threats, explosions, etc.

Numeric and alpha numeric pagers are not just for entertainment, not even just for day-to-day business and family communication. Pagers are also saving lives.