STRUGGLING ambulance trust Great Western Ambulance Service is expecting an improvement in response times after a new £800,000 state-of-the-art satellite dispatch system was launched.

The new computer aided dispatch system, which is believed to be one of the first used by an ambulance trust in the country, went live last week and was already making improvements on getting ambulances dispatched quickly and efficiently.

Great Western Ambulance Service covers 3,000 miles of Wilshire, Gloucestershire, Bristol, Bath and North Somerset making it logistically difficult to manage and dispatch their vehicles around the area.

The new equipment, which is also used by some police forces and the RAC, offers more information than just pin-pointing where each ambulance is.

One of the most beneficial aspects of the technology is that it can see all the congestion problems and accidents on roads, which gives dispatch staff a better idea of how long a particular ambulance will take to get to an incident.

John Oliver, communications officer for GWAS, said: "An example of when it will be of real benefit is when it looks like a particular ambulance on the motorway is closest to an incident but an accident is blocking the motorway. The ambulance would take a long time to get down to the next junction and turn around so it would probably not be the best vehicle to send.

"Also when a caller rings up it instantly pin-points where they are calling from, which can save vital seconds."

Mr Oliver said that while £800,000 was a "considerable sum to invest" GWAS believed it would see serious benefits including improving response times.

In July the Government published a report saying the GWAS had the slowest response times in the country. The report stated that in 2007/08 the trust got to emergency incidents within eight minutes only 72 per cent of the time, which didn’t meet the 75 per cent Government target and was lagging behind the national average of 77 per cent.

Mr Oliver said: "The technology went live last week and we allowed for a drop in response times while staff got used to the system, but the times are picking up already and we are confident response times will improve."