A new emergency dispatch system by INEM, the Portuguese National Institute of Medical Emergency, is under fire after a fatal delay in response. The ‘OnCall’ program, active for about a month, has been criticized by pre-hospital emergency technicians for being complex, slow, and prone to errors. Union president Rui Lázaro told CM that the platform mistakenly assumes all vehicles from a structure are inoperational if one is down.
The consequences of this flaw were felt on July 11 in Taipas, Guimarães. A 48-year-old man suffered a cardiac arrest and INEM dispatched a fire crew from Guimarães, 14 minutes away, despite the local Taipas corporation being only five minutes away with available resources. The man died at the scene.
INEM president Luís Cabral acknowledged the system’s limitations, stating that optimizations are underway to improve operational parameters. The incident raises serious questions about the reliability of the new dispatch system and its impact on emergency response times.
Article and image source: cmjornal.pt
