The ambulance-planning problem includes operational decisions such as choice of dispatching policy, strategic decisions such as where ambulances should be stationed and at what times they should operate, and tactical decisions such as station location selection. Any solution to this problem requires careful balancing of political, economic and medical objectives. Quantitative decision processes...

determination of pre-hospital delay time of patients with acute myocardial infarction and seeking ways of speeding up the time for reperfusion is an important factor to lower mortality in these patients. this is a cross-sectional study to determine pre-hospital delay time, its components, and related causes and conditions, obtained in 375 patients with prolonged chest pain referred to four hosp...

Facility location problems form an important class of industrial optimization problems. These problems typically involve the optimal location of facilities. For our purposes, a facility is just a physical entity that assists with the provision of a service or the production of a product. Examples include: schools, ambulance depots, emergency care centers, firestations, workstations, libraries e...

This paper describes the development and application of a modified Grouping Genetic Algorithm (GGA) used to identify sets of optimal ambulance locations. The GGA was modified to consider a special case with only two groups, and the reproduction and mutation schemes were modified to operate more efficiently. It was applied to a case study locating ambulances from a fixed set of alternative locat...

Stroke is the third highest cause of mortality and the first cause of disabled people in western countries. A significant number of the people who survive live with serious physical and psychological disabilities and require permanent assistance in their dairy activities. When detected, there is a limited time in which to take effective treatment measures. In this paper we present a multi-agent...

Accepted for publication 11 February 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A recent review article has raised a number of important practical issues for clinicians attending the scene of a road traffic accident, many of which have been amplified by other correspondents. 3 One matter that remains unclear, however, is the most suitable mode of transport to move injured patients from ...

BACKGROUND Injury due to falls is a major public health problem, especially for older people. We aimed to determine the accuracy of the ambulance call taker triage algorithm relative to paramedic assessment, and characterise variation in ambulance service demand for falls cases involving older adults over time and by residence type. METHOD We obtained all ambulance case records for January 20...