Transforming Emergency Care

The Visual Earth Group

Transforming Emergency Care

Transforming Emergency Care: A Feasibility Assessment of a Digital Ambulance and Bed Allocation Systems in Lagos State, Nigeria

Lagos, Nigeria

NGA

Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit

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Nigeria has one of the most advanced emergency systems in sub-Saharan Africa but still struggles due to poor communication. Within Nigeria, Lagos State established the first emergency response system, the Lagos State Ambulance Service (LASAMBUS). While it is still one of the most developed systems in the state and country, a study we conducted showed that LASAMBUS failed to respond properly to over half of their road traffic accident calls, mainly due to inaccurate accident locations and poor infrastructure. To combat this, we helped to build a system that would aid LASAMBUS to locate and respond to emergencies, particularly trauma incidents, more effectively. Even though LASAMBUS has improved its ambulance response, there are still gaps and problems that prevent it from providing fully effective trauma care. Among the many challenges raised, the lack of real-time information regarding ambulance dispatch and hospital bed availability was highlighted extensively. There is a need to expand the capabilities of existing systems (which we are responsible for building) to allow for a more seamless pre-hospital-to-hospital transition of care, which in turn can significantly improve patient health outcomes.

Our developed and deployed solution is a location-aware emergency and accident response service platform, leveraging and capable of geo-locating mobile devices that use 2-way text messaging channels, USSD, in reporting an incident or accident. This solution was built and deployed for use by the Lagos State Ambulance Service (LASAMBUS) and Lagos State Ministry of Health LSMOH, to help bridge the communications gap for incident reporting and to also help improve the quality and accuracy of incident and location reporting in a Low to Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) particularly where data poverty is an issue. Our solution has also made provision for an ambulatory dispatch management console. Before the introduction of this console, ambulance dispatch was estimated to take approximately 25 minutes to 30 minutes. However, following its introduction and use, ambulatory dispatch time was brought down to under 5 minutes. Furthermore, an ambulatory team console was also deployed. This was to help ambulatory teams receive the assignment of an emergency dispatch and also, record the patient and treatment intervention delivered before admission at a trauma centre.

Our proposed solution will serve the general populace, offering effective access to healthcare, healthcare operators and service providers, by providing a single point of medical (diagnostic, treatment, underlying conditions and impact of lifestyle choices) truth per patient, and healthcare policy and decision-makers. We believe our solution's approach, namely being innovative in creating and delivering our proposed service, offers the opportunity for wide-scale social impact and cuts across multiple sectors, inclusive of data science, healthcare, geospatial science and health policy, in the following ways: - It will improve patient access to timely emergency care and ensure healthcare systems provide effective care for trauma patients, reducing preventable deaths and building public trust in state-run healthcare. - It will also help optimize resource use and improve cost-efficiency for both patients and healthcare facilities. - This solution is relevant to all LMICs, particularly those building their emergency medical services, offering a scalable approach to address their immediate healthcare needs while supporting long-term growth. - The findings will provide valuable insights to policymakers and healthcare leaders alike.