London Ambulance Service Disaster: Factors and Possible Solutions

Running head: LAS
LAS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
LAS Overview.................................................................................................................................3
Factors Contributed to Such a Disaster...........................................................................................6
Possible Solutions............................................................................................................................8
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
In October 1992, the London ambulance service had suffered a disaster that brought their
operations to a virtual standstill over 36 hours, and approx. 20-30 people might have died
because of ambulances had arrived too late on the scene. After further investigation it has been
discovered that the new computer aided dispatch (CAD) software was responsible for the crisis
(Postma et al., 2017). The design of the software was completely inadequate for London
ambulance service. The software’s services were too much pathetic.it took 11 hours to make an
emergency calls during this 36 hours crisis.
LAS Overview
Automation of many of the human-intensive processes of manual dispatch systems
associated with ambulance services in the UK was the main objective of the London ambulance
service computer aided dispatch (LASCAD) project. There were number of problems in manual
CAD systems such as: identification of the precise location of an incident, the physical
movement of paper forms, and maintaining up-to-date vehicle status information (Laudon &
Laudon, 2015).
The basic functionality of the intended LASCAD system was as follows: 18 HQ
'receivers' were involved to record on system name and address of the caller, and the name,
destination address and brief details of the patient. Then the collected information have been
transmitted over a local area network to a locator. Patient’s location would be pinpointed on a
map display of areas within London. The system used to monitor continuously location of every
ambulance via radio messages transferred by each vehicle every 13 seconds. Then the nearest
ambulance to the patient would be determined by the system.

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Then it had been confirmed by the crew that it had been shipped. The ambulance crew
used to receive an acknowledge message. The HQ of any ambulance would automatically be
alerted where no acknowledgement had not been made. .HQ would send the acknowledgement
message. If any ambulance had been heading in the wrong direction it would be detected by the
system from each vehicale’s location messages. Then the controllers would be alerted by the
system. A further message would be sent to HQ when the crew of the ambulance had arrived. ‘
A rule-based approach in interaction with a geographical information system (GIS) had
been used to build the LASCAD system. A GIS software(WINGS) had been used to build this
system (Postma et al., 2017).