Sophisticated technology for sophisticated emergency medical services

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) organisations worldwide are dealing with a diverse but common set of challenges. In discussions with colleagues throughout Europe and North America, the precise descriptions or the relative priority of the challenges varies but the themes are remarkably consistent.

The communities that many agencies serve have an expectation of increasing levels of performance. In a world with near instant gratification for a whole range of needs and desires, the perception that the response to an emergency should be faster is not surprising. This is paired with an increasing need for EMS services within our communities as populations grow and age, stagnant or decreasing budgets and, often times, a wholly unrealistic level of performance expectation from elected and appointed officials based upon the level of financial support that has been granted.

It is, at best, a challenging time to be leading an emergency medical services organisation. How we have done business in the past simply isn't good enough within today's environment and we need to be investing in technologies that allow organisational leadership to make informed, realistic and effective decisions related to system structure and performance.