JOIN US City's ambulance network has approached Ministry of Home Affairs for wireless caller-location capabilities.
With an upgraded control room and 110 more ambulances, the Centralised Ambulance Trauma Service (CATS) said that their emergency response time will decrease by at least one-third.
CATS director Vasantha Kumar said that with the help of mobile service providers a caller’s location could be easily identified. “Our experience says that most of the calls come from nearby locations where a person wants help,” he said.
He also said that by caller location capabilities would help reach the rape and acid attack victims faster.
Upon receiving a distress call, the control room would send detailed information onto a tab installed in the ambulances so that an ambulance could be dispatched to attend emergencies. And with the help of GPS, the ambulance would be able to navigate to the place where help is needed.
Kumar said that a more high-tech control room would help reduce the voice communications. Now when a call comes, those staffing the control room take down the information and relay the details to the nearest ambulance, which is ready to rush to the site.
CATS takes 12-15 minutes to initiate an ambulance into action. “We are not far behind the international standard of 8-10 minutes,” he added. All the 152 ambulances in the fleet are GPS-enabled and could be monitored by the control room.
Kumar said that most of the patients who rely on CATS services come from more populated localities of the city. And for this ambulance service has 120 patient transport vehicles, which are small vans, help negotiate through city’s narrow lanes.
The response time depends on various factors like population, area size and city traffic.
Kumar said that the 110 ambulances for which tender has been floated would also help inch towards the international standards, said Kumar.
He said that CATS would prepare a database of hospitals and speciality clinics. So for specialised care ambulances would be able to respond faster. Mechanisms like pre-hospital warning are also in the pipeline.
The city ambulance service plans to hire 330-trained paramedics to share real-time health indicators of the patient with the causality ward of the nearest hospital.