Ambulance Victoria will soon deploy a predictive analytics platform that gives its paramedics access to real-time information, enhancing and accelerating its decision making as the need for emergency services grows.

The platform, supported by Microsoft Azure, aims to support machine learning, data mining, AI and contextual models for richer data insights that the agency can use to better its services.

The platform also has capabilities to store the data for use when needed and provides a single pane of glass for Ambulance Victoria staff to access data from multiple applications and across its different environments.

Ambulance Victoria Chief Information Officer Mark Gardiner told HITNA that the proposed predictive analytics program will add to its current business intelligence capabilities by analysing its current data to better allocate resources.

“Predictive analytics will enable Ambulance Victoria to use a single platform to combine data currently used… with other data sets such as weather and traffic patterns to better predict where resources are best allocated,” Gardiner said.

This helps staff with their decision-making, by identifying which routes and areas they should avoid as a result of weather or traffic, for example, so as to get to patients in a quicker time and deliver on the services required.

Ambulance Victoria currently uses some business intelligence capabilities using a Microsoft Dynamics-based system named Ambulance Victoria Reference Data Set (AVRDS) to manage its data.

But according to the pre-hospital emergency care and ambulance services provider, the data is “manually handled and carries significant lag” particularly around quality and resource or supply data, doing “little or nothing to enable decision support”.

“Ambulance Victoria currently lacks capabilities and tools to monitor and improve performance as well as support divisions in real-time, making the existing technology platforms one of the key challenges in delivering better patient outcomes,” the agency recently said.

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“As a modern ambulance service, Ambulance Victoria focuses on continual improvement. This includes looking at any new or emerging technologies that are available to enhance what we already do with a focus on delivering the right patient care, at the right time, at the right place,” Gardiner said.

“By harnessing all available data into a single platform, Ambulance Victoria will increase its ability to meet the growing demand for emergency services and deliver better patient outcomes.

“Once the tender is complete Ambulance Victoria expects to begin rolling out the platform over five years.”

Ambulance Australia has picked Microsoft Azure as the platform in delivering predictive analytics and is now on the lookout for a primary platform supplier to execute and support the platform securely, in addition to managing the data.

It is also looking to appoint a panel of suppliers that Ambulance Australia said “will help deliver solutions and expedite the delivery of new capabilities” like data dashboards and data ingestion.