CASE STUDY
T
he ambulance service of the Western
Cape Department of Health is one
of the largest ambulance services in
South Africa. It serves a population of over
six million and covers an area of almost
130,000 square kilometres.
“We transport between 45 to 50,000
patients a month,” said Dr Shaheem de
Vries, of the Western Cape Government. “It’s
critical to get the right people to the right
place, at the right time.
THE RESPONSE TEAM CAN FOLLOW
THE MOST EFFICIENT ROUTE USING
A MOBILE TABLET IN THE FRONT OF
THE AMBULANCE, WHILE RECEIVING
UPDATES OR SENDING OTHER
REQUESTS TO THE DISPATCHER.
“When you’re moving this many patients,
efficiency and speed are important.”
Besides responding to medical
emergencies, the organisation’s HealthNET
service also provides non-emergency
patient transport services.
“We move patients across the province
to central or regional hospitals and other
facilities,” said Dr de Vries. “This could be for
services at academic institutions or to have
specialised procedures carried out.”
Dimension Data created a hosted
infrastructure on its private Challenge cloud
platform for centralised deployment.
Western Cape EMS wanted to improve its
response times and quality of service. To
achieve these ambitions, it needed to look
at creating efficiencies in the critical systems
used in its communications model.
“We’re a medical organisation and we
focus on patient care,” said Dr de Vries.
“We needed a partner who could interpret
our needs and create a solution that would
deliver better efficiencies for us.”
After consulting with Western Cape
EMS, Dimension Data proposed and
implemented a call-taking and dispatch
solution. Dimension Data created a hosted
infrastructure on its private Challenge cloud
platform for centralised deployment.
This supports Western Cape EMS’s six
emergency control centres and new mobile
devices in its ambulances. The solution
is underpinned by a multi-protocol label
switching (MPLS) wide area network (WAN)
and a security layer.
“An emergency call to our contact centre
is routed to the most suitable call taker,”
said Dr de Vries. “The call taker captures the
location and other details using an intuitive
map and map search functionality.
“The system finds the most appropriate
dispatcher and feeds them this information
in real-time.”
The incident and patient information are
stored directly on the web server, which
allows for centralised data storage.
From this point, the dispatcher can select
and assign the closest ambulance and
response unit.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
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