London’s Air Ambulance Charity cares for the 10 million people living and working within the M25. The charity deals in life and death situations, helping patients in need of urgent emergency treatment.

When an emergency call comes in, London’s Air Ambulance medics must be ready to go – and so must their equipment. Ensuring medics have the right kit is crucial, but difficult – they need access to everything required in an ICU unit to care for a critically injured trauma patient, plus their own safety gear to keep them safe while they work. The service’s advanced trauma medics are able to perform life-saving treatment, including open heart surgery, blood transfusions and anaesthesia, at the scene.

Every second counts for London’s Air Ambulance, who attend everything from road traffic collisions and stabbings to falls from height and terrorist incidents.

Until recently, London’s Air Ambulance teams used paper, pens and whiteboards to create kit checklists and keep track of all equipment. But this wasn’t working for a team that prides itself on speed, agility and accuracy. The charity needed to find a digital solution that ensured checklists could be created and shared from mobile phones and tablets, giving all medics one view of their operation, wherever they were, at any time of day or night. So they called Intelogy, a Microsoft gold partner that specialises in helping companies and organisations embrace digital ways of working.

Intelogy came up with the idea of attaching QR codes to every medical bag so that kit can be logged digitally and shared with staff. This ‘low code’ solution, Microsoft PowerApps, removes manual processes and duplications so that medics have one clear picture of equipment. Once the code is scanned by a device, the user can log all the equipment in the bag before it’s ready to go out again.

Two medics restock the equipment – one person will place the items in the car or helicopter, the other will check it off on the Power Platform app, which uses a set of toggles to easily identify what’s been packed and what still needs to be done. Previously, tasks were recorded in multiple places, which wastes time and can cause confusion among medics who want to restock bags or prepare them for the helicopter or car. This information can also now be easily shared with other charity staff or the helipad team, who can support the medics by ordering new equipment for them.

With no time to lose, Microsoft PowerApps is helping to ensure frontline workers have everything they need to continue to save lives across the capital, at pace.