Eighteen ambulances, assigned to the Central Regional Hospital in Gatchina, a town near St. Petersburg, were equipped with GLONASS-based navigation devices as part of the “Social GLONASS” Project. Deployment of emergency vehicle monitoring and management system was sponsored by Start Development Management Company. Technology implementation was carried out by GLONASS North-West, the official M2M Telematics Group partner for North-West Russia.

“Main ambulance depot and three substations in Gatchina district are now equipped with the GLONASS system. We can monitor the location, travel direction, and speed of each of the eighteen vehicles,” reports chief physician of the ambulance depot Sergey Novoselov, “All information about vehicles’ movements is recorded in a computer database. This is very important to us; for example, in case of a traffic accident, the vehicle’s speed can always be established and help determine whether the driver was at fault.”

Now all Gatchina depot ambulances will be fully controlled by a dispatcher, who is able to pick the nearest available vehicle and plot the best route, greatly reducing ambulance crew response time.

Equipping Gatchina hospital’s ambulances with GLONASS system, an unprecedented social business project, is the first if its kind in Leningrad Oblast – an important administrative region encompassing the city of St. Petersburg. “For us this wasn’t an arbitrary act of charity,” said Anrey Nazarov, Start Development’s Executive Director, “We’re now building Zolotie Kluchi residential housing development in Gatchina. And in the works is a big, long-term project – the town of Uzhny, a third of which will be on the territory of Leningrad Oblast. I’m strongly convinced that our residents should be provided with all modern amenities, including such ambulance navigation systems, which become increasingly important with great distances.”

GLONASS equipment has also been installed at ambulance depots in Volosovsky, Volkhovsky, Tikhvinsky, Vyborgskiy, Lomonosovsky, Gatchinsky, Kirovsky, Luzhsky, and Slantsevsky districts. System testing is now underway, and the rest of the districts in the region are gradually being added.