International standards recommend provision of one ambulance for every 50,000 people to fulfill demand for transporting patients to definitive care facilities in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Governments’ consistent attempt to build capacity of emergency medical services (EMS) in LMICs has been financially demanding. This study is an attempt to assess the feasibility of capacity building of existing EMS in Delhi, India by using taxis as an alternative mode of transport for emergency transportation of road traffic crash victims to enable improvement in response time for road traffic crashes where time criticality is deemed important. Performance of the proposed system is evaluated based on response time, coverage and distance. The system models the performance and quantifies the taxi–ambulance configuration for achieving EMS performance within international standards.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
World Health Organization. Global Status Report on Road Safety. World Health Organization, 2015.
2.
DebasH. T.DonkorP.GawandeA.JamisonD. T.KrukM.E.MockC. N. (eds.). Disease Control Priorities: Essential Surgery, 3rd ed.
The World Bank, 2015.
3.
Assessment of Emergency Response Service (ERS) Performance in Madhya Pradesh. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd., 2013.
4.
RadjouA. N.MahajanP.BaligaD. K.Where Do I Go? A Trauma Victim’s Plea in an Informal Trauma System. Journal of Emergencies, Trauma and Shock, Vol. 6, No.3, 2013, pp. 164–170.
5.
RoyN.MurlidharV.ChowdhuryR.PatilS. B.SupeP. A.VaishnavP. D.VatkarA.Where There Are No Emergency Medical Services – Prehospital Care for the Injured in Mumbai, India. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, Vol.
25, No. 2, 2010, pp. 145–151.
6.
BjörnstigU.Pre-Hospital Emergency Care in Sweden. IATSS Research, Vol.
28, No. 2, 2004, pp. 24–31.
7.
Aboueljinane, L., Z. Jemai, and E. Sahin. Reducing Ambulance Response Time using Simulation: The Case of Val-de-Marne Department Emergency Medical Service. Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, Berlin, Germany, IEEE, 2012, pp. 1–12.
8.
SinghS. K.Road Traffic Accidents in India: Issues and Challenges. Transport Research Procedia, Vol.
25, 2017, pp. 4708–4719.
9.
SchmidV.DoernerK. F.Ambulance Location and Relocation Problems with Time-Dependent Travel Times. European Journal of Operational Research, Vol.
207, No. 3, 2010, pp. 1293–1303.
10.
Arbon, P., and J. Hayes. First Aid and Harm Minimisation for Victims of Road Trauma: A Population Study. Final Report. Flinders University. June, 2007.
11.
BhallaK.SriramV.AroraR.AhujaR.VargheseM.AgrawalG.TiwariG.MohanD.The Care and Transport of Trauma Victims by Layperson Emergency Medical Systems: A Qualitative Study in Delhi, India. BMJ Global Health, Vol.
4, No. 6, e001963, 2019.
12.
SharmaM.BrandlerE. S.Emergency Medical Services in India: The Present and Future. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, Vol.
29, No. 3, 2014, pp. 307–310.
13.
SinghA.R.GuptaS. K.Review of the Centralized Accident and Trauma Services (CATS) in New Delhi, India. Cibtech Journal of Bio-Protocols ISSN, Vol.
3, No. 1, 2014, pp. 45–49.
14.
GuptaS. K.KumarN.ThergaonkarA.R. SinghA.SinghS. K.P. MehtaS.Report of the Working Group on Emergency Care in India. Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Govt. of India, 2011.
15.
OxerH. F.Simple First Aid can Save Lives in Traffic Crashes. St. John Ambulance Australia,
Perth WA Inc.1999.
16.
LarssonE. M.MártenssonN. L.AlexandersonK. A. E.First-Aid Training and Bystander Actions at Traffic Crashes – A Population Study. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, Vol.
17, No. 3, 2002, pp. 134–141.
17.
FitzgeraldM.DewanY.ReillyG. O.MathewJ.MckennaC.O’ReillyG.MathewJ.MckennaC.India and the Management of Road Crashes: Towards a National Trauma System. Indian Journal of Surgery, Vol.
68, No. 4, 2006, pp. 226–232.
18.
JoshiA.RajhansP.GalwankarS.ArquillaB.SwaroopM.StawickiS.DasB.AggarwalP.BhoiS.KalraO. P.Academic College of Emergency Experts in India’s INDO-US Joint Working Group (JWG) White Paper on the Integrated Emergency Communication Response Service in India: Much More Than Just a Number!. Journal of Emergencies,Trauma and Shock, Vol.
6, No. 3, 2013, pp. 216–223.
19.
LamS. S. W.NguyenF. N. H. L.NgY. Y.LeeV. P. X.WongT. H.Fook-ChongS. M. C.OngM. E. H.Factors Affecting the Ambulance Response Times of Trauma Incidents in Singapore. Accident Analysis and Prevention, Vol.
82, 2015, pp. 27–35.
20.
LeeE.Designing Service Coverage and Measuring Accessibility and Serviceability of Rural and Small Urban Ambulance Systems. System, Vol.
2, No. 1, 2014, pp. 34–53.
21.
FischlerM. A.BollesR. C.Random Sample Consensus: A Paradigm for Model Fitting with Applications to Image Analysis and Automated Cartography. Commununications of the ACM, Vol.
24, No.
6, 1981, pp. 381–395.
22.
DerpanisK. G.Overview of the RANSAC Algorithm. Image Rochester, Vol.
4, No. 1, 2010, pp. 2–3.
23.
Raguram, R., J. M. Frahm, and M. Pollefeys. A Comparative Analysis of RANSAC Techniques Leading to Adaptive Real-Time Random Sample Consensus. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), (D. Forsyth, P. Torr, and A. Zisserman, eds.), Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008, pp. 500–513.
24.
YangS. Y.HsuC. L.A Location-Based Services and Google Maps-Based Information Master System for Tour Guiding. Computers and Electrical Engineering, Vol.
54, 2016, pp. 87–105.
25.
AhujaRTiwariG.BhallaK.Going to the Nearest Hospital vs. Designated Trauma Centre for Road Traffic Crashes: Estimating the Time Difference in Delhi, India. International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, Vol.
26. No. 3, 2019, pp. 1–12.
26.
Health Information and Quality Authority.
Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Key Performance Indicators for Emergency Response Times. Health (San Francisco), November, 2010, pp. 1–82.
27.
Road Safety Policy. Transport Department, Government of NCT of Delhi, 2018, p. 9.
