Emergency medical services operator, First Ambulance Services (First Ambulance) Sdn Bhd, is deploying YTL Communications Bhd’s (YES) advanced platform for fleet management to transform its entire fleet into smart ambulances.

The company said in a press release that it will be utilising the built-in WiFi in the ambulances to transmit critical patient data such as electrocardiograms (EKGs) and ultrasound images to the hospital while the patient is still en route.

“It gives us a bird-eye's view of the entire fleet to help us make timely decisions each day to optimise our operations," said Steven Penafort, First Ambulance director and co-founder.

Institut Jantung Negara emergency department manager Dr Farina Mohd Salleh says the solution has enabled IJN to reduce its door-to-balloon time by half. “The service is helping us save lives.”

Door-to-balloon time refers to the time from when the first symptoms start to the start of the procedure to the opening of the blocked artery.

First Ambulance is a local emergency medical services provider that has been around for 20 years. It has a fleet of 39 advanced life support ambulances and is run on an ISO 9001-certified management system.

"With IR 4.0, we see a unique opportunity to use our pure-IP pure-4G network to democratise IoT services through our national scale private cloud," said Wing K Lee, YTL Communications CEO.