App to help in medical emergencies

Nellore: Even though the 108 ambulance services are serving needy population during medical emergencies there has been no technological intervention to reach out to patients quickly. Even as employees of the services say that they have enough technical knowhow and manpower to handle cases on time, still there were sporadic incidents of deaths during transit because of delay.

Highlights:

• 108-services rely on traditional GPS for tracking where many states across the country are having advanced technology for reaching accident spots quickly
• Nellore is having 28 ambulances on an average 1 per two mandals where 4,000-5,000 cases were being attended per month for serving population of 30 lakh

At this juncture, district administration is now proposing to develop a specific application for resolving such issues.
In fact, there are 467 Global Positioning System (GPS) enabled vehicles across the state, only Nellore district is having 28 ambulance services to serve around 30 lakh population across the district and the EMRI had set up two divisions at Kavali and Gudur for operational convenience.

All these vehicles have been GPS enabled and can be checked operations of all these services checking for their status of movement and location through the Chief Minister’s dashboard (www. core.ap.gov.in). Normal modus operandi is that the Call Centre at Hyderabad receives the call and verifies status of available vehicle in the area via GPS and connects to it. The vehicle takes the rescue operation as soon as it gets communication from the Call Centre.

In Nellore, there are 46 mandals and there are 28 vehicles for taking up medical emergency services on an average one per every two mandals. But, majority medical emergency cases are reported on the National Highway 16 from Kavali to Tada in a distance of 170 km where 108 officials found frequent accidents at Kavali, Venkatachalam, Gudur and Naidupet. The police also identified 29 black spots on the NH-16 from Kavali to Tada.

There were 146 accident cases booked during 2016 in which deaths were 175 on the national highway alone.
So, according to the need officials have placed vehicles close to these accident prone zones. Currently, these 28 services in the district are serving around 4,000 to 5,000 cases per month at 4-5 cases per vehicle on a daily basis.

“We are able to attend 10,000 cases per month and still there may be a bit delay in services when more accidents are emergencies occur in a single mandal or area. We don’t have application and can check the status of vehicles through dashboard. We are deputing vehicles from other areas immediately in case of more number of cases,” said an official from 108-services on the condition of anonymity.

He opined that both app and call services are essential in case of non-availability of network for using the application. As a matter of fact, many places across the country are having apps that would help ambulances reach places on time. But, the state is lacking such application in 108 services, experts say it requires technical knowhow, internet connectivity and proper usage by the needy people.

Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and many other states are having such applications for faster services.
District Collector R Mutyala Raju said instances of road accidents in the district have been increasing abnormally. To avoid any delay in reaching out the accident spot quickly, there is a need for a specific app for speeding up the services, he said.

By P V Prasad