A WORLD leading medical service to be introduced in Wales has been unveiled at a military training base in Monmouthshire.

Wales’ new “flying doctors” will travel to the scene of emergencies by helicopter and on land in the most advanced vehicles seen anywhere in the world, its developers say.

Deputy Health Minister Vaughan Gething today unveiled the high-tech rapid response Audi Q7 4x4s after seeing highly-skilled medical teams in action during a live exercise at the Ministry of Defence’s training facility in Caerwent on Friday.

Doctors treated casualties in a mock-up demonstration of how the new service could be used after its launch next month.

Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service (EMRTS) Cymru will become the first national pre-hospital service of its kind in the UK.

It has been developed using the latest and best evidence from military and civilian services from across the world.

NHS doctors drawn from emergency medicine, anaesthesia and intensive care will work alongside critical care practitioners who come from various advanced nursing and paramedic backgrounds.

The critical care team will be able to respond to medical and traumatic emergencies at the scene, including the provision of medical support at major incidents and mass casualty events.

It will also be able to: • Stabilise and transfer time-critical patients from district general hospitals to specialist centres; • Provide critical care support for enhanced stabilisation and transfer of mothers and babies; • Provide support to rapidly transfer neonatal teams to time-critical life threatening emergencies.

• Support paediatric retrieval – transfer of time-critical patients.

This critical care team will use the specially-modified Audi Q7 4x4 fleet to treat, stabilise and transfer the most seriously-ill and injured patients to hospital.

Team doctors and paramedics will be able to provide blood and blood products, such as plasma, at the scene of an emergency – a unique feature for Wales and not available outside the military anywhere else in the world.

Wales will also lead the way as the vehicles can carry casualties, while also carrying advanced diagnostic equipment, including ultrasound and blood clotting analysers.

The team will use an integrated data collection system so the hospital or control room can be live linked to the casualty via mobile telecommunications equipment.

As well as using the high-tech vehicles, the critical care team will fly with the Wales Air Ambulance, creating Wales’ first team of “flying doctors”. The equipment carried in the road vehicles and the helicopters is interchangeable.

The EMRTS Cymru critical care team will operate from the Wales Air Ambulance’s Swansea and Welshpool airbases and the cars will be based strategically across Wales.

The critical care team will be able to reach 95 per cent of the population by air and 46 per cent by road within 30 minutes.

Due to the advanced resuscitation equipment the helicopters and cars carry, they will be able to travel much further and safer with a critically injured casualty than ever before.

The scheme has been created and developed by Dr Dindi Gill, a consultant in emergency medicine at Morriston Hospital in Swansea, and Rhys Thomas, an army consultant anaesthetist with 16 years of experience in the Airborne Brigade.

Dr Gill said: “This will not just improve the level of care but the decision-making during difficult circumstances as well.

“It’s bringing together years of experience and putting it together to set up the most robust set of processes yet in the medical field.”

Mr Thomas said it had taken three years for the programme to come to fruition. He added: “You’ve got to do a lot of paperwork and get all the health boards’ support. It’s been a long process.

“The biggest change from any other service is its completeness. It’s land and air, and we are dealing with all sorts of incidents, particularly trauma.

“The staff had to go through a rigorous selection process, which included physical and mental training. Over the past two weeks the staff have been challenged with 56 different scenarios to help them get ready.”

The Welsh Government will provide £2.868 million from 2015-16 to support EMRTS Cymru’s critical care team.

Mr Gething said: “Our investment in critical care consultants and practitioners means EMRTS Cymru will be one of, if not the most, comprehensively equipped pre-hospital teams in the world in terms of personnel, equipment, blood products, drug, diagnostics and data collection.

“It will transform our ability to provide the very best care to the most critically-ill patients in Wales. It will provide patients in remote and rural areas of Wales with rapid access to the skills of a consultant in emergency or intensive care medicine, who are equipped to provide life-saving, specialist critical care.”

Angela Hughes, chief executive of the Wales Air Ambulance charity, said: “To secure consultants on board helicopter shifts is a remarkable leap forward in providing one of the most advanced air ambulance services in the world.

“Over the last few years we have received incredible support from our fundraisers to upgrade our three helicopters and trial night flights. The addition of doctors to Wales Air Ambulance missions is another fantastic development in our service to people across Wales.

“We need to raise more than £6 million in charitable donations every year to keep the helicopters flying, so we are appealing for everyone to support Wales’ flying doctors.”