Evaluating dynamic dispatch strategies for emergency medical services: TIFAR simulation tool

Author

van Buuren, M. ; Aardal, K. ; van der Mei, Rob ; Post, H.

Author_Institution

Center for Math. & Comput. Sci., Amsterdam, Netherlands

fYear

2012

fDate

9-12 Dec. 2012

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

12

Abstract

In life-threatening emergency situations, the ability of emergency medical service (EMS) providers to arrive at the emergency scene within a few minutes may make the difference between survival or death. To realize such extremely short response times at affordable cost, efficient planning of EMS systems is crucial. In this article we will discuss the Testing Interface For Ambulance Research (TIFAR) simulation tool that can be used by EMS managers and researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of different dispatch strategies. The accuracy of TIFAR is assessed by comparing the TIFAR-based performance indicators against a real EMS system in the Netherlands. The results show that TIFAR performs extremely well.

Keywords

digital simulation; emergency services; graphical user interfaces; medical computing; EMS system planning; TIFAR simulation tool-based performance indicators; Testing Interface For Ambulance Research simulation tool; dynamic dispatch strategy evaluation; emergency medical services; emergency scene; response times; Computational modeling; Energy management; Hospitals; Time factors; Vehicle dynamics; Vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Simulation Conference (WSC), Proceedings of the 2012 Winter

Conference_Location

Berlin

ISSN

0891-7736

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-4779-2

Electronic_ISBN

0891-7736

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WSC.2012.6465214

Filename

6465214