Newsgroups: misc.emerg-services
Date:         Tue, 10 Nov 1992 13:38:00 GMT
From:         Daniel Burstein <0001964967@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      more on LONDON (UK) EMS problems

The following updates about problems with
the London Ambulance Service and its computers
(and patients) is relayed from the "Risks Digest"
volume 14.02

/danny burstein   <dburstein@mcimail.com>
------------------------------

Date: Thu, 05 Nov 92 10:47:30 GMT
From: Tony Lezard <tony@mantis.co.uk>
Subject: London Ambulance Service computer fails again

The Times of 5 November 1992 reports that Britain's biggest ambulance service,
the London Ambulance Service, yesterday reverted to full manual control after
another failure in its computer management system forced senior management to
concede it could not cope with its task.

It reports that the health secretary Virginia Bottomly was studying a letter
from a York-based computer consultancy claiming that tenders for the contract
from experienced providers of command and control systems were ignored in
favour of the lowest bid.

Control room staff had noticed early yesterday that system response was slowing
and computer back up procedures had failed to solve the problem. Because of the
faults, there was a 25 minute delay in dispatching an ambulance.

Ten days earlier, the service's chief executive, John Wilby, resigned following
allegations by the public sector union NUPE that a similar failure could have
contributed to the loss of 20 lives. The LAS has challenged NUPE to
substantiate its claim.

Martin Gorham, acting chief executive of the LAS said that yesterday's problems
occurred when demand was low, and not as a result of system congestion as had
been the case previously. In a statement he said "Since the problems with the
computer system at the beginning of last week, the LAS has been operating extra
back-up systems, including paper duplicates and voice confirmation to crews. In
addition, the staffing of the control room has been significantly increased. As
a result of these measures, call answering times have substantially improved,
leading to greater efficiency in allocating ambulances."

Tony Lezard: tony@mantis.co.uk  Mantis Consultants Limited, Cambridge, UK.

------------------------------

Date: 5 Nov 1992 09:22:48-GMT
From: paj <paj@gec-mrc.co.uk>
Subject: London Ambulance Dispatch Computer

The London Ambulance Service computer fiasco rumbles on.

According to "Computing" (5 Nov 92) the senior officials of LAS were warned
that the system would be an "expensive disaster" by Michael Page.  Page's
company submitted a competing bid which was rejected last year, and he wrote a
series of memoranda to LAS in June and July 1991 warning that the mapping
subsystem (which tracks ambulances and dispatches the nearest to an incident)
was not up to the requirements.  "The rule-based, analytical approach used by
the LAS cannot deal as well as an experienced operator with the small minority
of difficult cases.  The system wrongly reduces the influence of operators".

Meanwhile Mike Smith, systems manager at LAS stated "One thing that did not
fail was the computer.  What seems to have gone wrong is that the people
working on the system were flooded with exception messages - we don't yet know
why.  We may have lost local knowledge by breaking up sector desks at the
weekend."

LAS have now gone back to a hybrid system using human expertise to dispatch
ambulances rather than a computer.  The two days of chaos last week may have
cost up to 20 lives, although exact figures are of course impossible to obtain.

Paul Johnson (paj@gec-mrc.co.uk).           | Tel: +44 245 73331 ext 3245

       [Also reported by Chris Welch <me_s420@ceres.king.ac.uk>, with
       more from Brian Randell (Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk) and
       Lord Wodehouse <w0400@ggr.co.uk>.  Complete articles from Computer
       Weekly, The Guardian, The Independent, and Computing can be
       FTPed from the file risks-14.02LAS in the RISKS: directory.  PGN]