was designed and ordered. on 26 october 1992, the las started to use the new computer-assisted dispatch (cad) system, known as lascad. poorly designed and implemented, its introduction led to significant delays in the assigning of ambulances, with anecdotal reports of 11-hour waits. a subsequent enquiry found no evidence to support union claims that up to 30 people may have died as a result of the crash. the crash coincided with hundreds of control room exceptions messages related to alerts that crews responding to emergencies had not reported mobile, and the ambulance had not moved 50 metres (160 ft) within 3 minutes of despatch. the then-chief executive, john wilby, resigned shortly afterwards. this failure is often cited in case studies of poor engineering management. a software upgrade in july 2006 led to repeated system crashes during august. as a result, dispatchers had to go back to old pen-and-paper methods. on 8 june 2011, the las attempted to implement a new cad system, called commandpoint, costing £18 million, and built by northrop grumman, an american aerospace and defence technology company. during its implementation it developed technical problems and was replaced by a pen-and-paper method for several hours, until a decision was taken to revert to the previous system, ctak, in the early hours of 9 june. it was later announced that a review of the difficulties experienced would be undertaken. a second attempt at implementing commandpoint took place on 28 march 2012. the trust was considering terminating its contract with northrop grumman if the re-attempt to go live with the new system failed. despite a drop in response times to "category a" (life-threatening) emergency calls in the period immediately after implementation, which coincided with above average demand, the las stated that "the new system is now familiar to all control room staff and demand has returned to more or less predicted levels, with a corresponding increase in performance". on the morning of 1 january 2017, one of the busiest nights of the year due to new year celebrations, a system failure impacted the system for several hours. between 00:30 and 05:15 control room staff had to fall back on pen and paper methods. response times were further impacted by the concurrent failure of the web based tracking system and of automated satellite navigation systems for ambulance crews. this required location details to be passed by radio and then manually entered into satellite navigation systems in vehicles. the ambulance service stated that an investigation would be launched to establish the reasons for the system failure. in october 2019, the service adopted a platform called goodsam, which enables control room staff to connect to a callers' smartphone and assess seriously injured patients via a video link. they can locate a caller and check a patient's pulse from the scene. using the service in the first month staff decided not to use an air ambulance in 38 of the 67 cases where it was used. it plans to expand the use of the technology across 999 and 111 calls. finance in april 2015, the trust asked its commissioners for £27m extra funding to help it recruit more staff and buy new vehicles. popular culture london ambulance service has appeared in multiple documentary series including: men in the ambulance - 1974 bloomsbury 3 - 1986 red base one four - channel 4 - 1996 condition critical channel 5 - 2000 999: what's your emergency? channel 4 series 2 - 2013 an hour to save your life bbc series 1-3 2014-2016 ambulance bbc series 1 (2016) and series 6 (2020)