The emergency medical technicians working in 108 ambulances here have started pre-notification service wherein they alert the hospital about the condition of patient/s before arrival.
The service is operated as a part of the emergency medical care centre set up at the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH) under the Tamil Nadu Accident and Emergency Care Initiative (TAEI).
CMCH dean B. Asokan said that pre-arrival intimation will make a big difference in the management of persons in need of immediate medical attention due to road traffic accident/trauma, stroke, ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) or heart attack, burns, poisoning and paediatric resuscitation emergency management (PREM) -- six major components of TAEI.
Dedicated number
“The ambulance crew will alert the TAEI centre at the hospital about the nature of the emergency by dialling to a dedicated number. All arrangements will be made available at the hospital before the arrival of the patient/s. This will reduce the time taken to attend to the patient in the golden hour,” said Dr. Asokan. The time taken by the ambulance to transport the patient to the hospital is also expected to come down with the use of Avasaram 108 App, an Android-based application to access 108 ambulance service which transmits the exact location of the user to the 108 call centre. Avasaram 108 App can be downloaded from Google Play Store and install in Android based smart phone. The application will fetch the user's location while making an emergency call. This enables the call centre to view user’s location in the map and to dispatch the nearest ambulance. “As of now, the response time taken by 108 ambulances in metros is 8.3 minutes. The time taken in suburbs is 10.3 minutes. The response time is expected to come down when 108 crew gets the exact location of the person in need of medical evacuation,” said Dr. Asokan. According to V. Muthukrishnan, GVK EMRI’s programme manger for Coimbatore, emergency calls made using Avasaram 108 App is slowly gaining patronage in Coimbatore.