Sequential ambulance dispatch models for optimizing emergency medical services

抄録

In the last decade, there has been a growing concern in Japan about the proper use of resources related to emergency medical services, including ambulances. This letter proposes two new methods to optimize the ambulance deployment using a dynamic model, which precisely represents the sequential decision-making process of ambulances dispatched to each request. These methods give allocations to minimize the arrival times in all requests but differ in formulating objectives: one minimizes the average, and the other minimizes the maximum. A computer simulation is used to compare the performances of the two methods in terms of efficiency and fairness.