ELAB Series: The Modeller’s Dilemma How the Busyness of an EMS System Changes What Matters (47:59)

Omda Readiness team has been helping EMS and fire fighting organisations across the world through discrete event simulation (DES) modelling for more than 25 years to help them make the best possible decisions when it comes to improving their effectiveness and efficiency. Tef Jansma explores how the EMS sector has changed dramatically during this period.

Decades ago, many EMS organisations looked more like taxi companies than organisations managing a entire prehospital pathways from call to care. These days, some EMS organisations are responsible for managing entire teams taking phone calls, triaging callers into the right priority, and ideally trying to help lower priority callers over the phone. For higher priority calls, when it comes to physically responding with vehicles, there are many different response models these days as well.

While EMS organisations still differ in size, scope, and response models, one factor has changed for almost all of them: they have become much busier, both in terms of the absolute number of patients they help, as well as their vehicle use. Tef will look at how the increased workload of EMS organisations keeps presenting new challenges for DES modellers - not only in terms of technical complexity and scope, but also from an ethical/societal point of view.