BENGALURU: The state government is mulling a revamp of Karnataka’s 108 ambulance service to ensure seamless and timely availability of vehicles to those in need, Health and Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar said on Friday.“The current system has a lot of loopholes. There is a need to correct them by adopting modern technology and global standard operating systems,” he said. The minister held a meeting with representatives of Infrastructure Development Corporation (Karnataka) Limited (iDeck), experts and senior officials to deliberate on the draft terms and conditions of the contract.
The government aims to ensure a system wherein an ambulance arrives at the required destination within a few minutes of a call being received. The call centre should be able to identify dispatch the nearest available ambulance. An app similar to cab aggregators Ola or Uber was also discussed.
“There have been several instances of people using other vehicles after calling several times and finding ambulances were unavailable in an emergency. Such instances should not repeat. We do not need vehicles which look like ambulances but do not serve the purpose. Every rupee spent should be useful to public,” Sudhakar said. It was also discussed in the meeting that only technically and financially strong companies be allowed to bid through global tenders.