Welsh Ambulance Service to lead collaborative study on emergency dispatch decisions through video consultation

11.07.25

THE Welsh Ambulance Service will lead a new study into the use of live video consultations to help decision-making when deploying critical care teams in response to 999 calls.

The project is a collaboration between clinicians and researchers across the Welsh Ambulance Service, West Midlands Ambulance Service, University of Warwick, University of Bristol, Imperial College London, Aberystwyth University, the Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service and the Wales Air Ambulance Charity.

The 999 RESPOND-2 study, which is being funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), aims to improve decision-making around whether to send Enhanced Critical Care Teams (ECCTs) to emergency calls.

These specialist teams deliver advanced care for seriously ill and injured patients at the scene of an incident.

The research aims to help services make efficient use of critical care teams across the entire system, as ECCTs are a valuable and limited resource that would normally be dispatched only to the most appropriate incidents.

Currently, it is difficult for control room clinicians to fully capture the complexity and volume of information they need to make the best decision.

Advances in technology have enabled ambulance services to test live-stream video from callers’ smart phones during an emergency call, to help ambulance staff assess quickly and accurately how urgently help is needed for an unwell patient.

Professor Nigel Rees, Assistant Director of Research and Innovation at the Welsh Ambulance Service, said: “We’re studying how emergency critical care teams size up risk and severity in high pressured and time sensitive situations.

“We are doing this by comparing video consultation calls, where clinicians can see the patient, the accident scene and other factors as opposed to traditional 999 calls, where the clinician can only make a decision based on descriptions from the caller.

“We hope to learn more about who sees what, who says what and how these decisions shape emergency response when seconds matter and really can be the difference between life and death.

“From major trauma to severe medical emergencies, ECCTs are integral to pre-hospital and emergency services, but they are a finite resource.”

The study is the first to consider the impact of live-stream video in how people communicate with each other in 999 calls and to provide evidence on whether live-stream videos can overcome some limitations of audio 999 calls.