Designing a new ambulance for London

As Chair of the London Ambulance Service Patients Forum I have joined a steering committee which is looking at designing a new ambulance for London. The committee held its first meeting last week at the Royal College of Art and included representatives of ambulance service trusts from other parts of England, procurement managers from the LAS, representatives of a vehicle manufacturing company, a procurement manager from NHS London (which is one of the main funders of the project) a team of designers from the Royal College of Art, a paramedic from the LAS (who is taking feedback from current ambulance crews) and I, as a patient representative. The committee also includes Jonathan Benger, who is a consultant and whose titles include Professor of Emergency Care, University of the West of England, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust ,Medical Advisor, Air Operations, Great Western Ambulance Service and Chair, Clinical Effectiveness Committee, College of Emergency Medicine.

We were presented with a series of proposed designs by a team of designers from the RCA and discussed these in detail. The procurement managers were mostly concerned about the costs and timelines for manufacturing and delivery etc, although one interesting aspect of this was that the EU is about to legislate on a common EU standard for ambulances called SEN, which apparently (and I am a non-specialist here) relates to regulations on bulkhead doors. One of the design proposals is for a vehicle which opens at the side, rather than, as at present, at the back. It was fascinating to attend a meeting of people who often do not meet and whose input on a new design, which could possibly be rolled out across the UK, showed the fertile mix of ideas from NHS staff, designers, patients, manufacturers, clinicians and others. This is really how such projects should be taken forward so that designers are aware of all the issues involved before any final design is presented. This is a real cutting edge project and the steering committee will meet again in April.

In the interim, for anyone who still wants to see the exhibition on the ambulance and on other fascinating medical related design projects, you need to get down to the Royal College of Art as soon as possible. But hurry because the exhibition closes on Thursday. I attended the presentation by the design postgrads at the Helen Hamlyn Centre after the meeting and there were some really interesting projects, including redesigning signage in hospitals, varying layout in centres for people with dementia and altering the internal structures of residential homes for people with autism. The ambulance design project is jointly funded by NHS London and the Helen Hamlyn Centre.

A short film here of similar type work carried out by the RCA last year - I hasten to add that the designs portrayed here are not what is being discussed in the current project but give an indication of what may follow further down the line. There is some discussion about having a new small and fast emergency vehicle with a single responder in time for the London Olympics in 2012.