Intelligent ambulance placement for maximum efficiency. At present the average response time of a medical emergency vehicle is 9 minutes. By strategically and intelligently placing them, we can further reduce this time, and increase the number of lives saved

Rush hour, in particular, is said to be the most dangerous time to be on the roads. Statistics put out by the Indian Government shows that nearly 35 per cent of all road accidents occur between 3-9 pm. As visibility drops post 6pm, and people are rushing to get home, perhaps, this could be among the reasons for accidents during the rush hour. And it is during this period, that transportation of a patient to the nearest hospital is truly troublesome, amid peak traffic.

Intelligent ambulance placement for maximum efficiency. As a solution, emergency medical service providers have developed various strategies for ambulance placement to reduce the response time, thus making optimum use of the Golden Hour.  The time after an accident can be optimally used to make a difference between a life saved and life lost, if recovery actions are able to take place in time. However, routing problems and traffic congestion is one of the major factors hampering speedy assistance. By identifying sites where the possibility of accidents are higher and the closest spot for ambulance placement, the response time can be greatly reduced.

In order to operate efficiently as well as effectively, ambulances should be deployed in areas where there is maximum demand and the vehicle should be able to reach the victim within a drive time of five minutes. Heavy traffic zone is more prone to accidents. Going by the flow of traffic at varying times of the day, study observed that positioning an ambulance in the opposite direction of vehicular flow, will reduce the response time significantly.

In a sector which is tightly time bound, rationing resources for maximum efficiency is a dire need of the hour. Unfortunately ambulance providers are caught having to constantly defend their decisions to shift the vehicles from the government allotted spaces. But in order to fully understand the advantages of strategic ambulance placement, there is a lot we can learn from western countries who have implemented such systems and seen success in their response rates over a period. The same can also be felt in cases of large scale events such as sports matches, where there is a risk of having a medical emergency due to stampede or man made disasters. By having an ambulance on site or in close proximity to the sports venue, the response time can be significantly reduced and thereby save precious lives.

Manish Sacheti
CFO – Ziqitza Healthcare Ltd
Sunshine Tower, Senapati Bapat Marg,
Dadar(W), Mumbai -400013
Ph: 91 2261785000

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In the year 2015, The Ministry of Health and Welfare published a note that instituted a National eHealth Authority (NeHA). This was done in order to regulate the increasing usage of electronic records in healthcare, and for the maintenance of digital health information and e-Health records across the country.

Coming on the back of the current healthcare scenario of India, where services, especially in rural India have been largely unaffected by the influx of the Internet, e-records are the need of the hour. Even today, doctor’s prescriptions, lab and X-ray results are archived in the same manner as we did decade ago, and manually transported from one place to another.  Thus with the institution of NeHA, Indian healthcare is set to change radically.

At NeHA, the goal is ‘to ensure development and promotion of eHealth ecosystem in India for enabling the organisation, management, and provision of effective people-centered health services to all in an efficient, cost-effective and transparent manner’.  Keeping this as the end goal, electronic health records (EHRs) will definitely go a long way to enable uniform and smarter access to healthcare.

EHRs enjoy the ability to store and make information available through a cloud, and can help provide higher quality and safer services. EHRs can also help ensure better care by providing accurate, complete, and up to date information about patients. Through EHRs, information can also be shared securely with medical professionals and patients. By employing such methods in healthcare operations, it can greatly help with accurate diagnosis and reduce medical errors. EHRs also go a long way in improving the relationship between patients and medical service providers, besides enabling safer and more reliable prescriptions. As EHRs function as a centralised source of patient information, they also help promote the use of legible and streamlined documentation, as well as improve efficiency through decreased paperwork and reduced duplication of testing.

In a country like India, where accident statistics show one serious incident being reported every minute and 16 deaths every hour, EHRs are definitely the need of the hour for emergency medical service providers. With the implementation of EHRs, systems can be installed in ambulances and hooked up to patients to continuously monitor and record their heart rate, blood pressure and other vital information. This will then be directly recorded and stored in a patient’s record, for further use.

With more than 75 and 65 per cent of outpatients and inpatients being admitted to private facilities in India, the use of EHRs has become increasingly important for accurate diagnosis. One of the biggest problems we face today is that of wrong diagnosis, and by bringing in a modern approach with e-records, this can be minimised and eventually become a thing of the past.

The use of information and communication technology has already made its way into our lives, with thousands of apps constantly accessing our information. Data like locations, contacts, pictures, fingerprints and even habits are being tracked, and used to communicate between service provider and user, to make our lives easier. This brings us to introducing a similar system for healthcare, which is of prime importance. At present, the use of information and communication technology has been limited to registration and billing for patients at hospitals. With the NeHA at the helm of matters concerning EHRs, we can soon change this and bring about a revolution in Indian healthcare.

Manish Sacheti  
CFO, Ziqitza Healthcare Ltd

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