Gurgaon: GPS installed in ambulances to track their movement real time, boost response time

Authorities have promised more ambulances at the civil hospital soon.

All 16 ambulances of the Gurgaon district, including six belonging to the civil hospital, have been equipped with GPS-enabled devices.

The control room at the Gurgaon civil hospital from where the movement of ambulances is tracked. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO)

Of the 16 ambulances, 10 ply in varied locations that include Badshahpur, Bhondsi, Sohna, Daula village, Sector 10 hospital, Farrukhnagar, Daulatabad, Pataudi, Hailey Mandi and Kasan.

The move is aimed at tracking the real time movement of ambulances and is being seen as a direct fallout of an incident last month where a three-year-old boy died allegedly because of the delay in filling the fuel tank of an ambulance at the civil hospital.

“This move is aimed at tracking the exact location of the ambulances as also the fuel consumption,” Neelam Thapar, deputy civil surgeon, Gurgaon civil hospital, said.

The details of the driver, location and the number of trips the ambulance does in a day are also being recorded and monitored by the staff at the civil hospital ambulance unit. The devices were installed last week and has already gone some way in providing transparency to the services, said doctors at the government hospital.

Read I Gurgaon civil hospital has one ambulance per 500 patients

The devices enable tracking of the ambulances from the control room and also boost the response time with regard to patients waiting for a ride to hospitals.

“All our ambulances are now equipped with GPS-enabled devices and their movements are being tracked real time. The devices get us vital information on where the patient is being taken and how long a trip takes,” MP Singh, nodal officer, ambulance in-charge, civil hospital, Gurgaon, said.

There is one ambulance for every 500 patients at the civil hospital. An estimated 3,000 patients visit the civil hospital every day, while around 250 are admitted.

The authorities are also considering augmenting the number of ambulances. Earlier, a total of 19 ambulances used to play on 10 locations. However, three of them had to be discarded because of poor condition. “We will have more ambulances soon. We are trying to fix the loopholes in the system. Our operators are being able to track the ambulances with the help of the GPS system through the day and assign duties,” Thapar said.