Queensland Ambulance Service to get new patient transport system

Growing demand from an ageing population has prompted to Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) to begin the search for a new ambulance transport request and scheduling system.

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According to the agency, some 20,000 medically authorised non-urgent patient transfers are provided per month, and demand for these services is on the rise due to demographic and population health factors.

To help meet the data collection, resource utilisation, and reporting required to manage the demand for the transport service, QAS is now investigating available options.

“The QAS has investigated how other ambulance services world-wide manage similar demand and service delivery challenges,” Queensland Health documents read.

“Many ambulance services are already using, or are moving to a Web-based patient transport request lodgement system, and automated resource scheduling and optimisation products that either integrate with their Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system or run alongside it.”

As such, QAS is opting for a Web-based patient transport request lodgement system, with Queensland Health as the primary external system user, along with a number of targeted high volume private medical facilities.

“Also required, is an automated resource scheduling component to assist with the existing manual dispatch function, and optimise resource utilisation,” the documents read. “These additional system components are required to be integrated with the existing VisiCAD system currently in operation within DCS.

“The solution will also be required to accept transport request information from a small number of transport request source systems and manage exceptions through a standard interface."

The solution will be required to cater for 500 internal QAS users - -with 100 concurrent users -- and up to 1,000 external QAS client users.

The project follows the news in late November that Queensland Health plans to begin piloting a new mental health data warehouse and business intelligence application as part of a wider push by the Queensland government to support mental health information management.

Earlier this year, the South Australian government said ambulances in the state would be able to [artnid:381637|tap directly into emergency response and medical information systems|new]] via a high-speed mobile broadband network under a new project flagged by the state government.

Follow Tim Lohman on Twitter: @Tlohman

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