Hardware: Breakthroughs for the battlefield
GEESEY: Yes, one thing is hands-free electronic medical records. The point of injury where a medic or a buddy is ren- dering aid is called care under fire, which is very difficult to document. A number of different handheld devices require a sty- lus, but it’s hard for anyone to document care at the same time they’re applying a tourniquet. And, of course, that handheld doesn’t necessarily have connectivity because the envisioned network doesn’t really exist yet to allow data to flow ahead of the patient.
So what we envision in the future is PEO Soldier putting radios on every deployed soldier. So we’re working with DARPA, TATRC, and a couple other organiza- tions on a digital voice recorder that can suppress the background noise of helicopters, gunfire, and those sorts of things. And then we’re also working on automatic speech recognition. To pro- cess spoken words, technology such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 10 is actually on our hardware configurations, available for providers to use in-theater.
So the medic at the point of injury would speak into that microphone, which would create a .wav file that would then be trans- ferred back to the combat support hospital. That spoken text would then be processed into recognizable text and inserted into the medical record.
MIL EMBEDDED: Any plans for smart devices?
GEESEY: We’ve been experimenting with putting our applications on the iPad, iPhone, and other Droid-type devices, and we’ve been able to get our applications to work on those devices. The Army also has the Army Training Network to Go in which a soldier can download manuals onto their iPad or iPhone. MC4 training products are being piloted on the next version of ATN2GO. As far as training, we’re leveraging Defense Connect Online to make our applications and systems training mate- rials more readily available to soldiers using a ‘Go mobile device.
MIL EMBEDDED:Wow, you folks really have a lot going on. But if you wanted to close with a mission statement for MC4, what would it be?
GEESEY: We are working to improve the availability of medical information – whether it’s patient health records, medi- cal supply information, or situational awareness in command and control. Our goal is to seamlessly make that data avail- able throughout the chain of care from the far-forward point of injury all the way back to our CONUS-based hospitals like Walter Reed Army Medical Center. By having lifelong electronic medical records available to all providers along that route, the results include better patient outcomes and availability of information to facili- tate medical R&D. Also, once the soldier transitions, we want to make those records available to the Veterans’ Administration so those soldiers receive the benefits to which they’re entitled.
Lieutenant Colonel William E. Geesey is the product manager for the Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4) Product Management Office. With more than 26 years of active, reserve, and National Guard service, he has held a variety of management positions in medical logistics and healthcare administration.
20 March/April 2011 MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48