The cars are equipped with everything from oxygen to defibrillators and life-saving drugs. (CBC)

Ottawa's paramedic service has set up a fleet of one-person ambulances known as "zoom cars" to speed emergency response times.

The cars are equipped with everything from oxygen to defibrillators and life-saving drugs. Each is driven by a single paramedic who responds to emergency calls immediately and treats patients until an ambulance can arrive.

The "zoom car" paramedic then hands the patient over to the ambulance paramedics, and is free to attend to other calls.

A pilot project last year showed the "zoom cars" can dramatically improve response times to emergency calls, in some cases beating ambulance response times by as much as five minutes.

Anthony Di Monte, chief of the Ottawa Paramedic Service, said ambulances in the city are responding to life-threatening calls in an average of 12 minutes and 47 seconds.

"It's not good enough for me, personally, and it's not good enough for our patients," he said. "We have to get better."

While response times have improved by about 30 seconds in the last year, Di Monte said the goal is to respond to urban emergency calls in nine minutes and rural ones in under 16 minutes. The goal is to meet those targets 90 per cent of the time.

So far this year, paramedics have met those targets 65 per cent of the time.

Di Monte hopes that by deploying the 15 "zoom cars" in wards with the highest emergency call volumes, Ottawa paramedics will achieve that.

The city is expected to add 63 paramedics to its emergency staff later this year.