Astana, 5 November, . The Astana city ambulance station is working on introducing artificial intelligence that will suggest an urgency category to the dispatcher for calls to 103, the city public health department said in response to a BES.media request.
The system is planned for use when calls are received and handed to field crews in all the station’s units. On a call it will propose category options based on the information received, while the final decision will be made by an employee, taking into account professional knowledge, experience and the AI’s recommendations. The response gives no implementation dates.
The request followed an audit by Astana’s revision commission covering 2023 to the first quarter of 2026. Auditors found 5,261 repeat ambulance calls within 12 hours after initial service by primary health care mobile teams; in 61 cases patients died before medics arrived. The department replied that the share of repeat calls is 2.1–2.5% and stable, and that the fact of a repeat call and a later death does not prove improper care: each case needs individual analysis. Deaths before arrival after service under the fourth urgency category fell, the department says, from 27 in 2023 to 16 in 2024, 13 in 2025 and five in the first quarter of 2026. Separately the revision commission noted that in the first quarter of 2026 the city lacked 76.2 field crews.
What it means: AI is meant as a prompt for the dispatcher, not a replacement: the decision on the category stays with a person. It does not close the shortage of crews that the auditors found.
What we know now: AI is being introduced; there are no dates or system name; the department disputes the conclusion that repeat calls and deaths mean poor care. The revision commission’s conclusion is dated 8 October 2026.
Background: The revision commission is the city’s body of external state financial control; its conclusion assessed the efficiency of budget spending on ambulances. An urgency category is an assessment of a call determined by the patient’s condition and the information available at the time of the call; on a repeat call it may change.
We have also reported that the Ministry of Health is preparing AI for CT and MRI scans and a single database.
