Emergency 061 health service plans to use AI to improve its response times in Malaga
The Junta de Andalucía's regional health minister, Antonio Sanz, has announced the "innovative" project using artificial intelligence to improve the service which handles nearly 2,000 calls a day in the province
From January to October 2025, the 061 emergency health coordination centre (CES-061) in the Andalucía region handled more than half a million calls, with a total of 230,997 requests for emergencies. This is 1.5% more than in the same period last year according to figures published on Sunday 16 November by the Andalusian regional government's spokesperson for health, Antonio Sanz, who was speaking to the staff at the centre for Malaga province, located in the Technology Park.
During his visit Sanz announced that the CES-061 is developing a line of artificial intelligence applied to triage, demand prediction and clinical decision-making. With this 'Triage' project, the aim is to improve the allocation of emergency resources: "We want to achieve a significant reduction in response times, one of the key aspects we are looking for with the incorporation of these new technologies along with the support of professionals. AI is a great copilot, but it never replaces the professional," Sanz said.
The three-year project will investigate whether artificial intelligence can be used to speed up the response time for urgent medical care. "The technology can help to predict whether it needs medical attention in a very short time, making it a very useful tool for the decision making of the mid-level coordinator on the ward," he said.
Air traffic control from Malaga
Sanz praised the Malaga centre for its work and highlighted that in air medical care, Malaga is essential since the mobilisation of the five medicalised helicopters in Andalucía are coordinated from the 'flight table' of this Malaga centre. In addition to being "the pioneering province" in setting up the 'Trex' project, which provides airborne teams with the necessary material to carry out blood component transfusions in out-of-hospital emergencies.
Some 44 pre-hospital transfusions have been performed with the 'Trex' project in the airborne emergency teams
"The implementation of this project was carried out by the air medical emergency team in Malaga and now it is being implemented in Granada, and Seville. This gives us the capacity to be able to advance a blood transfusion before arriving at the hospital and the data from this project confirms this: the teams in Malaga, Granada and Seville have already been able to carry out 44 transfusions with this method," Sanz explained.
He visited all the facilities at the centre and as well as the ambulances and concluded with the message of "continuing to adjust the healthcare response to an efficient time". He added that the Junta de Andalucía will "continue incorporating more AI so that Andalucía continues to be a pioneer in digital medical records".
