The London Ambulance Service is to conduct an inquiry into what caused its UKP1.5m Computer Aided Despatch system to fail on Monday, which according to union representatives led to a number of fatalities. The system crash followed an influx of 600 extra emergency calls on Monday above its usual 2,300 or so. According to the Ambulance Service, the system hardware consists of 40 80486-based Qi DX/33 workstations and four FT DX/25s fault-tolerant servers from Birmingham-based Apricot Computers Ltd. The command and control software comes from Aldershot, Hampshire-based Systems Options Ltd, and processes information on the location of each of its ambulances and passes on details of emergencies to the ambulance crews. Other vehicle location equipment, supplied by Swindon, Wiltshire-based Securicor Datatrak Ltd keeps the Service’s head office informed of the location of each ambulance. The ambulance crews also use mobile data terminals, supplied by Solo Electronics Ltd to inform the control room of their movements. The Computer Aided Despatch system is based at the Waterloo, SE headquarters. Apricot marketing and communications director James Blackledge says he is confident the hardware was not to blame. We have close contact with the site and keep error logs. We have had no notification of hardware failure. However, until the Ambulance Service completes its enquiry we cannot clear ourselves. A spokesperson for the Service said it was waiting for the outcome of the independent review. We don’t yet know what the problem was. The fault could lie with the hardware, software or traffic. Systems analyst at the Service, Jeff Westcott, said he had received complaints that the system was slowing down, although he felt that people dealing with the calls were unable to process them quickly enough, and didn’t believe the despatch system was slowing down. Reported antagonism between ambulance crews and the control room did not help, he added. Systems Options refused to comment. One published report suggested that the system requires an acknowledgement from an ambulance sent on a call, and that these were not being received, so that another, and still another ambulance would be called until the computer could find none that were free.
