SA Ambulance Service’s Digital Ambulance
Flinders University | South Australia Ambulance Service
The Challenge
The Digital Ambulance Project, a partnership between Cisco, the South Australia Ambulance Service (SAAS), andFlinders University, is pioneering the concept of a“connected vehicle” to transform frontline emergency care. The initiative encompasses both clinical and non-clinical streams, ranging from improving patient care through real-time access to clinical applications, to optimising ambulance fleet management, asset tracking, and operational efficiency.
Early field trials have already highlighted the project’s critical value, particularly in rural and remote regions of South Australia, where Secure Corporate Wi-Fi delivered by Cisco technology enabled seamless connectivity even in areas without reliable cellular or radio coverage. By providing paramedics with continuous access to patient records, diagnostic tools, and communication systems, the project demonstrates how digital infrastructure can directly improve patient outcomes and workforce effectiveness.
The Partnership
The partnership between Cisco and SA Ambulance wasfostered through the SA Cisco office. Flinders UniversityCisco Chair, Professor Trish Williams and InnovationCentral Adelaide supported a student project toinvestigate the existing data for its potential usability.
The Solution
The Project aims to enhance emergency care coordination by integrating ambulance operations with hospital systems via digital technologies. The solution addresses the loss of in-field time for ambulances, resulting in lower capacity for emergency services; the lack of visibility of vehicle maintenance health in real-time leads to the need for off-road maintenance checks; and a lack of real time and digitally assisted vehicle maintenance diagnostics leads to time loss in maintenance diagnostics. The innovation is in deploying sensor-equipped vehicles for real-time and recorded digital information, creating high-level data point capture for maintenance telemetry, and using contemporary solutions, such as Splunk for data interpretation.
Recognition & Impact
Project Highlights
- The lessons to date underline the importance of resilient connectivity as a foundation for digital health innovation, and the next steps will focus on scaling the model, integrating additional applications, and exploring national adoption of the connected vehicle framework.
- The data analysis can provide improved knowledge on maintenance and operations of ambulance vehicles to reduce down-time of vehicles in maintenance, and track vehicle operational safety, both in-vehicle and in traffic.
- Completion of student project for initial data investigations.
Contact Person & Details
- Prof Trish Williams, NIIN Research Chair in Digital Health Systems, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University trish.williams@flinders.edu.au