Strengthening the Capacity of Emergency Medical Services in Low and Middle Income Countries using Dispatcher-Coordinated Taxis

Abstract

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.