Government/Military Trends
June 2003
Leveraging New Technology to Deliver Better Medical Care
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There is no doubt that the Military Health System (MHS) has entered the 21st century. The adoption and deployment of new technologies — many of them built using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products — are allowing the MHS to manage supplies more effectively and deliver greater levels of healthcare. But it is the use of wireless and Web-based technology that is allowing the MHS to stretch the boundaries of telemedicine.
Telemedicine allows medical practitioners to deliver healthcare to patients in remote areas using telecommunications technology. Advances in wireless technology and improvements in bandwidth are helping the MHS to practice telemedicine even in areas of conflict, by letting onsite medical workers transfer high-resolution images — such as pictures of injuries, X-rays, or CAT scans — to specialists for help in treatment.
One project in the works that is leveraging new technology to deliver greater levels of medical care in the field is the Battlefield Medical Information System-Telemedicine (BMIST). Developed using a COTS Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), BMIST is a point-of-care handheld device that allows military healthcare providers to record, store, retrieve, and transmit patient data directly from the field. The device can also help with the delivery of care by storing diagnostic and treatment materials for easy reference. It is designed to be able to interface with military medical databases, allowing for the real-time transfer of medical information as new patient data is entered during treatment.
The same team working on BMIST — the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), a group within the United States Army Research and Material Command — is also in charge of the development and support of telemedicine equipment sets for Special Medical Augmentation Response Teams, Medical Command, Control, Communications and Telemedicine (SMART-MC3T). These SMART-MC3T teams are three-person rapid response teams responsible for managing communications during emergencies and also for training medical personnel. The equipment set developed by TATRC for use during SMART missions derives from commercially available satellite-based medical technology.
Medical military personnel are also using the Internet to collaborate in new and innovative ways. Moving far beyond email, they are using desktop collaboration tools to create shared workspaces in order to share information, work together on projects, and communicate via encrypted instant messaging.
As technology changes the way the military engages in battle, so too will it change the face of medical response both during and outside conflict. From the use of extensive databases for the storage and retrieval of armed forces personnel medical data to the deployment of PDAs for the immediate transmission of patient information to the use of the Internet for collaboration and communication, the military medical community is changing the way healthcare is delivered to its members.