Smart Emergency Response System for Medical Services

Abstract

According to India’s State-Level Disease Burden Initiative, road traffic accidents are among ten largest causes of deaths in the country. More than 80% of accident victims do not receive medical attention within one hour of the incident. On time medical emergency response systems are crucial for increasing the survival rates of people involved in road accidents and those who require pre-hospital care. Ambulance services play a critical role in medical ERS to provide medical aid. Researches from developed countries have shown that 15-30% of road traffic deaths can be avoided with good coordination of in-hospital trauma management and in-time rescue and retrieval systems. The primary aim of the study is to improve the district's existing emergency response system so that ambulances can be reached and accessible in the shortest time feasible. The study provides a simulation-based ambulance relocation optimization approach. A case study is undertaken for Prayagraj District, which ranks third in the overall number of road accidents in Uttar Pradesh, to validate the suggested strategy. The objective is to assess the current emergency response system's level of service in terms of spatial distribution and recommend new base station sites to optimise coverage and minimise response time. For simulation, five scenarios are considered- existing situation, relocation of additional ambulances, optimized location, optimized location with dynamic relocation of ambulances and optimized ambulance fleet. Compared with the existing situation, the experimental results demonstrate that response time can be reduced by about four minutes just by relocating the existing ambulances. An increase of 21% road length coverage is also observed by ambulance relocation. By, relocating the ambulances every season according to the varying demands, response time can be further reduced by about a minute. A total fleet of 58 ambulances is required so that almost all cases are covered within a response time of 15 minutes. Further improvements can be made by reducing the delay in ambulance dispatch, patient pickup and transfer to the hospital and also by assigning cases to the ambulance just after it leaves the hospital instead of waiting for it to reach its base station.