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Published doctoral thesis

The doctoral thesis

Adaptive emergency medical services allocation: Crafting the patient safety net in prehospital emergency care

A systems-oriented synthesis of how emergency medical services can allocate finite capacity while protecting patients under uncertainty.

AuthorPeter Hill
InstitutionKarolinska Institutet
Published2026
Extent124 pages

The thesis connects dispatch stewardship, time-sensitive triage, response-time variability and queue governance into a systems-oriented account of EMS allocation under uncertainty.

Ambulance systems operate with uncertain information, fluctuating demand, geographic variation and finite resources. Every allocation decision shapes who receives help first, who waits and how safety margins are distributed across the system.

Who can safely wait — and how does the system keep that patient safe while certainty is still unavailable?

02 / The doctoral thesis

Four studies. One safety net.

01

Dispatch stewardship

How professionals govern scarce response capacity.

02

Clinical risk

How time, patient characteristics and presentation interact.

03

System delays

Why averages conceal variability and tail delays.

04

Safety-net synthesis

The queue as a safety-critical virtual waiting room.

03 / All studies

Four studies.
One systems question.