Air Ambulance Industry Turns to Tech for Improved Safety

Over the last 20+ years, the air ambulance industry has experienced some turbulence. In 1990, there was only one air ambulance accident in the U.S. with a fatality. Throughout the 90s, the number of air ambulance crashes, mostly involving helicopters, began to climb. The number of accidents peaked in 2004, when there were 19 accidents and 29 fatalities. Accidents have leveled off since then, but it’s still very much an issue the industry struggles with. Fast-forward to the present, the air ambulance industry has seen rapid growth. In 2003, according to the Association of Air Medical Services (AAMS), there were 545 helicopter air ambulances in the U.S.1 Today there’s almost twice that number. TechNavio estimates that the industry will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.57% over the period of 2014 to 2019, with an increasing number of vendors and a growing number of people in need.2 As we move into 2016, one of the biggest challenges facing the air ambulance industry is adequate safety, and one of the most promising prospects is the development of patient transport drones combined with remote-controlled telemedicine. The military has experienced several incidents in which soldiers were in need of medevac services, but were unable to receive these critical services due to their location in hot zones deemed too high-risk for standard helicopter medevac response. In an attempt to find a solution, the U.S. Army sponsored a Small Business Innovative Research gr...
Source: JEMS Operations - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Ambulances & Vehicle Ops Source Type: news