In an emergency medical system, the quality of the service is fundamental since this might be the difference between life and death of the user. Beyond the attendance quality, one of the most important components of the service level is the mean response time to an emergency call. However, acquiring equipment and training for the team to reduce this time imply additional costs and investments. In this case, an important trade-off appears between the service level and the investment in the system. To analyze this trade-off, there is a well-known model named hypercube, which is based in spatially distributed queueing theory. In this paper, we adapt and apply the hypercube model to analyze the "Anjos do Asfalto", an emergency medical system on the highway Presidente Dutra between the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, in Brazil. The results showed that the hypercube model can be an effective tool to support strategic and operational decisions of emergency systems on highways.
emergency medical system; queueing theory; hypercube model
