Emergency Medical Services
GPS Technology Improves Ambulance Response Times
Heres an ongoing irony in many communities: If residents call 911 for an ambulance and then order a pizza, theyll be chewing on their third slice before the ambulance arrives. But its not too humorous when considering survival rates of people suffering from serious injuries, such as arterial bleeding or cardiac arrest, decrease with each minute emergency help is delayed.
Municipalities throughout the world are beginning to utilize global positioning systems (GPS) technology to reduce ambulance response times. It improvement that the American Heart Association (AHA) estimates could save as many as 100,000 lives each year. One study suggests reducing ambulance response times to five minutes could almost double the survival rates for heart attacks.
GPS technology uses radio waves to calculate the distance between vehicles and orbiting satellites. It determines locations of vehicles and emergency destinations, and uses on-board computers with mapping software to provide turn-by-turn directions to emergency sites.
The technology, which is available in some luxury cars, is being used by a growing number of fire, police and emergency medical service vehicles nation-wide to determine which vehicle is nearest an incident and to identify the shortest route to an emergency destination.
Minnesota; Southeast Michigan; Denver, Colorado; and Palm Beach County, Florida have implemented GPS technology. The London Ambulance Company in England reduced its response time by a critical two minutes after implementing GPS technology.
Pending legislation in Boston, Massachusetts would require Bostons 911 dispatchers to utilize GPS receivers on all emergency vehicles operating in the City of Boston. The legislation would also require all of Bostons emergency vehicles, including private ambulance companies providing primary or secondary back up transportation services, to employ a modern GPS navigational computer to identify the shortest route destination to 911 emergency calls.
Early response time for the delivery of cardio pulmonary resuscitation and defibrillation is imperative for survival of a cardiac arrest victims whose brain cells and heart muscles will begin to die after four to six minutes without a pulse or respiration.
The likelihood of successful resuscitation, according to the AHA, decreases by approximately ten percent with each minute following the onset of sudden cardiac arrest; thus, the survival rate of a cardiac arrest victim drops to virtually zero if defibrillation is delayed for more than ten minutes.
The use of GPS technology by emergency medical services would provide faster response times and save lives and reduce disabilities from injuries and insure that an increasing number of residents receive rapid treatment whenever they encounter an emergency.
In addition to employing GPS technology, other methods of reducing ambulance response times include increasing the number of emergency medical technicians, ambulances, and ambulance base stations located throughout municipalities.
