In urban medical emergency rescues, traffic congestion and safety issues often hinder the rapid, safe and precise execution of rescue operations, affecting the efficiency and safety of urban emergency rescue services.

In order to focus deeply on practical issues concerning people’s livelihoods and to shoulder the responsibility of “people first, life first”, the Traffic Police Office of Nanjing Municipal Public Security Bureau Jiangning Branch, in collaboration with Duolun Technology and other entities, jointly developed a one-click escort platform integrating both police and medical systems. This platform was first launched in Jiangsu Province and put into use in May 2024, aiming to safeguard lives with technologies.

Story of An Ambulance Driver in Jiangning, Nanjing

On July 19, 2024, at 10:30 a.m., Mr. Ma, an ambulance driver in Jiangning, Nanjing, received an urgent rescue call. From Nanjing Jiangning Hospital’s Hushanlu Campus to Fengze Road, passing through 17 traffic signals, he reached the patient in just 9 minutes, compared to the usual 20 minutes it takes for regular driving. This life-saving rescue truly achieved “acceleration”.

Leading with Technologies, Safeguarding Lives

The platform integrates cutting-edge technologies such as the internet, big data and cloud-edge intelligent control to ensure emergency rescue support. Through four core processes: mobile application submission, secure review access, cloud-edge intelligent control and situational monitoring inspection, the platform establishes secure communication channels among ambulances, traffic command centers and roadside signal devices. This setup creates a fully online automated vehicle-road-cloud collaborative mechanism for rescue missions, achieving three objectives of low delay in rescue efficiency, low interference with road orders and low deployment of on-site police forces.

Three Innovations Enhancing Safety

The platform also has comprehensively innovated in terms of process, mechanism and technology. Leveraging “closed-loop escort processes based on internet navigation for seamless assurance”, “environment perception and intelligent collaborative control mechanisms based on multi-source data” and “low-interference safety control technologies for complex environments”, it combines practical considerations and collaborative innovation, thereby reducing demands and risks of ambulances running red lights at intersections and significantly enhancing safety assurance for ambulance passage.

Seamless Assurance with 24/7 Closed-loop Escort Process

Based on internet navigation, four subsystems—the handheld app system, internet review system, emergency escort digital cloud services, and emergency escort assurance system—establish a seamless and closed-loop escort process of emergency task initiation, vehicle-road environment perception, cloud-based intelligent calculation and dynamic collaborative control. This process rapidly establishes green life channels, operates 24/7 with automated monitoring and ensures priority passage rights for ambulances.

Multi-source Data and Intelligent Cooperative Control Mechanism

Given varying traffic flows at intersections and unexpected events, the effectiveness of emergency escort coordination can be impacted.

To ensure the efficiency of priority passage for ambulances, the emergency escort vehicle-road-cloud coordination system utilizes multiple data sources such as internet traffic conditions, traffic flows and traffic incidents to sense changes in the traffic environment at each intersection. The emergency escort digital cloud service center handles intelligent calculations to plan optimal routes, preemptively identifies and clears queued vehicles, supports deviation optimization during travel, controls routes, and optimizes traffic during peak and off-peak times. With these concerted efforts, it achieves efficient dynamic escorting for ambulances.

Innovative Application of Low-interference Safety Control Technology

Under traditional phase-jumping control methods, drivers of non-escorted public vehicles are prone to run red lights, and vehicles already in intersection waiting areas for straight-through or left-turning directions face safety hazards and also disrupt the rapid passage of ambulances.  

To address these issues, Duolun Technology innovatively proposes the application of a safe green smooth control algorithm. This algorithm categorizes and controls different phases such as the start control current phase stage, subsequent smooth transition phase stage, and escort phase stage. It adapts different algorithms for layered classification control during peak and off-peak periods, vehicle and pedestrian phases, etc. This approach ensures rapid passage of ambulances in the escort direction and reduces traffic interference in non-escort directions.

Focusing on Livelihoods, Promoting Efficiency with Intelligence

Head of Command and Dispatch Unit of Traffic Police Office of Nanjing Municipal Public Security Bureau Jiangning Branch

Building on the complete networking of traffic lights across Jiangning District, the police-medical one-click escort platform integrates with ambulances via an installed APP. The GPS system on board the ambulance interacts in real-time with traffic lights on the road. When the ambulance is 700 meters away from an intersection, traffic lights turn green.

Currently, with collaboration from various entities including the Traffic Police Office of Nanjing Municipal Public Security Bureau Jiangning Branch, Jiangning Urban Digital Governance Center, Health Commission, Nanjing Jiangning Hospital and operators, the platform has been piloted on 6 ambulances of Nanjing Jiangning Hospital (Hushanlu Campus).   

Currently, the platform has completed approximately 180 emergency escort missions, averaging about 10 missions per day. It has reduced travel time by around 50% compared to navigation time, thereby saving valuable treatment time for patients.

In the future, Duolun Technology will continue focusing on practical public needs, and further explore and integrate innovative achievements in intelligent traffic management upgrades based on specific traffic demands in different regions, with a view to providing exemplary cases for enhancing China’s smart traffic management capabilities and innovation levels and giving new technological impetus to China’s modernization practices.