Yorkshire Air Ambulance Use D4H To Support Helicopter Emergency Medical Service

Customer Background

Yorkshire Air Ambulance is an independent charity providing a life-saving rapid response emergency service to over 5 million people across 4 million acres.

The Yorkshire Air Ambulance has developed into a sophisticated emergency service that provides state-of-the-art emergency medical care throughout the county of Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Yorkshire has a vast topography that includes not only remote, rural and densely populated areas but also includes major motorways and road networks.

It may surprise you to know that the Yorkshire Air Ambulance Charity relies on the generosity of individuals and organizations to help save lives across Yorkshire. To keep both of Yorkshire’s Air Ambulances operating they need to raise £4.4 million per year. It is crucial that each and every one of their operations provides a meaningful value to the region.

The Challenge

Yorkshire Air Ambulance was looking for a robust and flexible system that would assist their flight desk in the management and reporting of all their operations. This platform was going to be used by their operational staff but would build a data picture for the entire organization.

“We had been using a popular software in our industry but it wasn’t standardized and flexible enough to adapt to our specific needs, it was also difficult to access. These are the main reasons that pushed us to seek other alternatives.”
— Andrew Lister, Director of Aviation, Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Some of their requirements needed for their new system were:

1. It needed to be a collaborative system for their incidents, so everyone involved could input their part. Put good information-in, get good information-out.
2. They needed to manage incidents with it. A single source of truth platform where they could create a real-time common operational picture between the flight desk and the crew in the air; a solution for all team members.
3. They needed a strong reporting tool that would allow them to re-evaluate their incident responses. They needed useful insights that would provide direction on how to improve response times and capabilities.

The Solution

Yorkshire Air Ambulance eventually selected and deployed D4H Incident Management and D4H Incident Reporting to assist their operations.

“We like D4H as it is a standalone off-the-shelf solution. Everyone is getting very involved with the use of it. The first thing every crew member does when starting their shifts is to log into D4H to understand what is happening.”
— Andrew Lister, Director of Aviation, Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Currently, D4H is being used across the entire organization every time a helicopter takes
 off. The charity is able to collect information about each incident, and they use it to gather data and statistics to help better understand their responses.