Helinut - I only wish I had the IT skills and imagination to put something like that together!
206 jock - apologies if my previous post came across as disparaging (this wasn't the intention). The UK HEMS charities do an impressive job of fund raising and joint meetings can only serve to help ensure best clinical practice. My point about a national coordinating body was meant as a suggestion to help build on the current success (cost savings, shared governance, etc.).
Regarding your last point:
sorry guys, your lovely shiny helicopters are just a way to get the people that matter, where they're needed, quickly
I'm not sure if that relates to getting medical staff to the patient quickly or getting injured patients to hospital quickly. Perhaps both. In either case, the academic paper (EMJ) alluded to previously looks at both aspects and still doesn't reach a firm conclusion. Whilst I don't doubt that those presenting at the meeting you attended have operational figures and some excellent results/outcomes, the complexity of this area of research means that achieving statistical significance (which is the bottom line for those that hold the purse strings) is very challenging.
As mentioned before, the value of HEMS all comes down to how you quantify its success and is intrinsic to the research challenges highlighted above. I suspect that this will remain the case for some time...
Simon