Quick Dips

Ambulance Assessment

Staff and students at Victoria University are using operations research techniques to evaluate the Wellington Free Ambulance Service. They hope to determine the number of ambulances which would be required to satisfy various service standards.

Operations research is a specialised science that uses mathematical and statistical methods to help management decision-making.

The study's initial results indicate that up to four more ambulances may be required to meet the British standard for activation time. Activation time is the time between the call being received and the ambulance being despatched.

"It is most encouraging that we now have accurate figures of our ambulance requirement based on scientific methodology, rather than the previous estimates based on intuition, guesswork and economic strictures," says Robert Upton, chief executive officer of the Wellington Free Ambulance. "These decisions may literally mean life and death to some of our citizens."