Medical Need:

Medical care of casualties during combat poses several unique challenges, including limited resources, often poor or nonexistent communication abilities, and heavy demands on a caregiver’s physical and mental capacity. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are a class of tools that help to reduce these issues by providing effective support to patients and caregivers in extreme environments like the battlefield or medevac scenarios.

NGVH

Next-Generation Virtual Health (NGVH)

Vivonics and our partners at General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) sought to objectively evaluate the needs, technologies, and human factors behind effectively deploying CDSS tools in combat casualty scenarios, with a focus on devices for monitoring the physiological state of patients. These efforts included an evaluation of the needs of combat medics and an assessment of existing monitoring and CDSS technologies, with the goal of developing a conceptual framework for evaluation and development of next generation virtual health systems. The ultimate direction of this field of work will be the development of autonomous tools for assessing, treating, and documenting and transferring care of patients on the battlefield.

Disclaimer: The U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, 808 Schreider Street, Fort Detrick MD 21702-5014 is the awarding and administering acquisition office. This work was supported by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, in the amount of $1,586,997.95, through the FY18 Broad Agency Announcement under Award No. W81XWH2010470. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions and recommendations are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the U.S. Army.

(Award W81XWH2010470 is titled Assessment of Technical and Human Factors Driving Effective Deployment of Intelligent Physiological Monitoring Focused Clinical Decision Support Tools)