Siren's song strikes chord with Ice Angels

It's helping emergency services in big cities around the world and now Optima has had some help of its own, receiving the largest Ice Angel investment made in this country to date.

The $1.3 million investment from the group of private venture capitalists will help Optima seek new customers in its key markets in the US and Britain, where its product, Siren, has already been used to coordinate the movements of ambulances and fire engines to improve emergency response times.

Optima's analytical software shows areas of a city where response times are poor, and helps operators test various scenarios to gauge their ability to respond on time.

If an incident occurs, Siren can tell the dispatchers the best way to deploy their vehicles to get there as quickly as possible.

The company says Siren is the only commercially proven, simulation-based planning tool made for emergency services. It is being used to plan ambulance services in big cities in North America, Canada, Australia and the UK.

Optima chief executive Cory Williams said the goal was to get 10 new customers in the next year, in the US and the UK.

The sum given to Optima tops the previous ceiling of $500,000 for a single investment by the Ice Angels Group, a private investor network specialising in young, entrepreneurial businesses.

Optima, formerly Optimal Decision Technologies, started as a group of mathematicians working to solve multimillion-dollar business problems.

Air New Zealand uses its pairing and rostering solutions to help it save $17 million annually in matching scheduled flights with available pilots and crew across the globe.

A project to help St John Ambulance determine the best placement of new ambulance bases across Auckland's rapidly sprawling boundaries in 1998 led to the development of Siren.

Ambulance services pay Optima an annual licence fee for Siren, and a tailor-made package for their geographical setting costs $350,000.

The product's planning module allows for "what if" analysis to help answer questions such as: what would happen if a station or hospital is closed or, how many ambulances will be needed to match demand and still meet response-time targets in five years' time?

A new programme, Siren Live, can then help with the dispatch.

Williams said a product to help the airline industry in a similar way was in the pipeline.

Siren could also be transferred to police services, he said.

Optima, with staff of 15, is due to graduate from the Ice House business incubator in Parnell in January.