With the aim of making the emergency ambulance services in India at par with the 911 service in USA, ZHL has opted for InfoTrack’s Vehicle & Staff Management System for managing the 1000 ambulances that the company is running under 108 emergency services
By Mohd Ujaley
Ziqitza Health Care Ltd (ZHL) was established in 2004, with the aim of providing world-class ambulance service in India. The company has partnered with state governments and National Health Mission to manage and operate emergency medical services, under the umbrella of 108 ambulance services. Currently ZHL is operating more than 1000 ambulances in public private partnership (PPP) mode in Bihar, Rajasthan, Kerala, Odisha and Punjab.
It is critical for ZHL to ensure that its control room can view the exact location of the ambulances that are parked at different locations to ensure that they can be dispatched to the area where they are required in minimum response time. To achieve this objective, ZHL has deployed technologies for connecting its control room with the vehicles on the ground. A further scaling up of the IT systems was required when the scope of the company’s operations expanded and it started reaching out to patients in rural and remote areas.
The partners with which ZHL had been working, were not in a position to fulfil the IT requirements, hence the company started searching for a new partner for automating the process of ambulance dispatches and bringing efficiency to the entire operation. After meeting several vendors, ZHL finally selected Infotrack telematics, which deals with fleet management system.
“Now we are having bigger forays in healthcare— we are providing ambulance, mobile health vans, medical assistance over the phone and much else. Our dependency on technology has increased. So we needed a new partner like Infotrack telematics to modernise our systems,” says Manjula Easwaran, Chief of Finance, Ziqitza Healthcare.
ZHL Dials InfoTrack for 108
ZHL purchased the ‘Emergency Dispatch System’ from InfoTrack. With the deployment of this software, response teams at ZHL are enjoying fuller control of the information that comes from the field. They are now in a position to respond to any emergency situation in record time. The software has the capacity for clearly showing the geographical location of the nearby events and the response vehicles. This ensures that the response to any incident is efficient and effective.
More than 1000 ambulances run by ZHL in different states for 108 emergency services are fully automated and connected to control room with the help of this software, which ensures that within a minute the control room is in a position to answer the crucial questions — Where is the vehicle? Is it mobile or stationed? On the basis of this information, the ambulance gets selected for being dispatched to the required location.
For InfoTrack, meeting the technology requirements of 108 service was not an easy project. The company did have a highly developed dispatch system solution, but the dispatch system was mainly designed to take care of the needs of the taxi operators. CK Ramakant, Managing Director, InfoTrack Telematics, says, “We have been quite good in taxi dispatch system, but now we had to develop a system for managing ambulance service. After understanding the requirements of ZHL, we customised our product to meet all the technology requirements of 108 services.”
The Deployment Challenges
Usually, the deployment of ambulances is spread across the districts of the state which also include rural areas with poor roads, limited power supply, and no accessibility to connectivity. And, also training to use the technology for ambulance drivers and call centre staffs and proper co-ordination with hospital, medical staffs and patients are the key for the success of 108 services. For both ZHL and InforTrack, it was a challenge, however with their respective domain expertise, both were able to meet the expectation.
“Actually, InfoTrack had something which we required, they were already using dispatch system for taxi business in India and abroad, we did not have to hire any third party as ZHL had the domain expertise and technical expertise was provided by the InfoTrack. And now we have the product completely suited for the our requirement in India”, assert Easwaran of ZHL.
Initially, the partnership started with one project and now solution has become an integral part of ZHL tech philosophy and the software is being used in all the projects in various states across India. Easwaran informs, “Software is the backbone of our operation.”
The Tangible Benefits
After the implementation of InfoTrack’s Vehicle & Staff Management System there has been a seminal improvement in the efficiency of ZHL. Inside its ambulances, the company has data terminals, which communicate with ZHL call centres and provide information related to attendance, consumption of medicines, consumer bills, electronics, PCR, etc.
Easwaran says “This solution is helping us optimise our operations and save costs, but the most important benefit is that now we are in a better position to save lives.”
InforTrack’s deep understanding and expertise in the area of dispatch system, GPS and vehicular technology has helped ZHL in winning many new contracts. Usually, there are two aspects to the contract – operation and technology. For technology, ZHL continues to rely on InfoTrack.
“We always take CK Ramakant for technical presentation. We have got about 6-7 contracts post CK coming on the board,” says Easwaran.
The Road Ahead
Both ZHL and InfoTrack expect surge in the demand for their services. Apart from 108 emergency ambulance services, ZHL also runs 102, 1298, 1033 ambulance services. The company is also managing Punjab Police helpline -181 and the health helpline in Odisha -104.
For majority of the players, FMS is the family run business—they don’t use technology, in the way it should be used. But with rapid growth of taxi services and e-commerce, the segment is witnessing rapid technology deployment and InfoTrack expects substantial growth going forward.