IIM Indore EPGP Class Learns About Leveraging Data Analytics To Run Ambulances

Way back in 2013, Antoine Poirson was working on setting up a solar plant in Rajasthan, when the death of a colleague, caused by delay in taking him to the hospital following an accident, made him realize the shortcomings in India’s healthcare and led to the co-founding of Stanplus, a mobility healthcare business.

StanPlus focusses on providing 24 X 7 emergency and medical transportation support. The company provides private ambulances with an efficient, intuitive fleet management system. It operates across all segments, from simple vehicles for patients with limited mobility, to fully equipped life support vehicles which can handle all type of emergencies.

The platform aggregates the ambulances of hospitals, private operators, government-run services, and its own—six advanced life support (ALS) ambulances.

Delivering a talk at IIM Indore titled ‘Analytics in StanPlus: For a data enabled Future’ on June 26, 2018, Poirson referred to the accident at the solar plant. He went on to speak about how the company was leveraging Data Analytics to ensure ambulance demand-supply equilibrium, manage a fleet of ambulances, optimize turnaround time, improve customer-retention and keep a strict tab on the drivers.

The talk was part of iKON CxO Guest Lecture series, an initiative of EPGP – the One Year Full Time Post Graduate Program in Management for Executives at IIM Indore. A live case study was also conducted at the end of the event followed by a Q&A session.

Meanwhile, in continuation of the StanPlus story, an article in The Quartz said the idea for an efficient ambulance service received a boost when in 2015, Poirson met Prabhdeep Singh, who had a professional background in the pharmaceutical sector, at INSEAD Paris. Together with fellow student and geospatial expert Jose Leon, they created a prototype of a platform to aggregate and dispatch life-saving services. On emerging as winners at the INSEAD venture competition, they also managed to secure an initial funding of $15,000. The facility was set up in Hyderabad.

At present, StanPlus has a fleet of 300 ambulances that caters to emergency and non-emergency cases in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, and eight surrounding cities. It has partnered with 15 hospitals to serve 2,500 beds. The service makes use of a call centre and efficient routing decisions made using geospatial data to reach victims within the “golden hour” (the first hour after an injury, when emergency treatment is most effective), besides serving families of chronic patients who frequent hospitals.

Each of the ambulances has three trained drivers who take turns during a 24-hour period, alongside trained paramedics on-board. The platform aggregates the ambulances of hospitals, private operators, government-run services, and its own—six advanced life support (ALS) ambulances.