Bihar’s 102 for ambulance set to integrate with national 112 line

PATNA: Bihar has agreed to integrate its 102 ambulance call centre, managed by the health department, with the 112 National Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) of the ministry of home affairs (MHA) in a phased manner through integration of the application programming interface (API) of the 102 and 112 call centres, while allowing both platforms to function independently as of now, said officials familiar with the development.

In a letter to the home department on Saturday, Dr Abhishek Kumar Sinha, state programme officer for health system strengthening (HSS), said the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), an arm of the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) for carrying out research and development in information technology, electronics and associated areas, had visited the 102 call centre and conducted an analysis of the application of the current 102 ambulance call centre for its integration into the 112 national ERSS.

However, not much has been achieved after the C-DAC team’s visit last December.

The letter to Animesh Pandey, additional secretary, home department (special cell), seen by the Hindustan Times, drew reference to the January 19 meeting by the additional chief secretary, home, in which it was decided that both control rooms will share data to track the movement of ambulance, dummy mobile data terminals to be installed in 5-7 ambulances in Patna district, to be taken up on a pilot basis, besides deciding that the 102 call centre would operate independently.

It also said that the C-DAC, which was the total solution provider (TSP) for the project, would work tandem with the representatives of the 102 control room to complete the integration.

The ERSS superintendent of police (operations) of the Bihar Police, Sheela Irani, had on April 8 reviewed the API integration of the 112 ERSS with 102 Ambulance service.

Irani, however, was not available for comments on Sunday.

As part of the Centre’s vision, the ERSS is a pan-India unified emergency response system with a single emergency number ‘112’ for reporting emergencies to provide 24x7 golden hour assistance, aimed at saving lives. Emergency signals (voice, SMS, email, panic signals, social media, etc.) triggered by citizens shall converge at a centralised state emergency response centre (ERC) and swiftly processed to multiple emergency response services like the police, fire, health, etc. for instant assistance.

The ERC is equipped with necessary signal receiving and back end processing systems and equipment and dispatches emergency response units through the district coordination centre to the location of the distress caller.

Last year, Bihar’s cumulative response time, which is the time taken for an emergency response unit to reach to the location of the distress caller from the time the emergency calls lands in the ERC, was 19.93 minutes, better than Jharkhand (24.02), Odisha (22.58) and West Bengal (26.87), as per an explanatory note on ERSS-112 the MHA had shared on February 23 with the chief secretaries of Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand, the member states of the Eastern Zonal Council (EZC). The Union home minister is the chairman of the EZC.