US Army Explores Tactical Cellular Telemedicine

Prototype medical military software, commercial hand-held technologies, and tactical cellular 4G networks are being examined as a means to send medical information from the battlefield to doctors for real-time communication and decision-making.

Key medical and technical personnel from the US Army Medical Research & Materiel Command (MRMC; Fort Detrick, MD, USA) and the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, USAl) used portable physiological monitoring devices with streaming video, voice, and photo capability to send electronic Tactical Casualty Care Cards (TC3s) over a tactical cellular network to a surgical facility so that surgeons could see injuries and the treatment had been performed prior to the patient's arrival.

The work was performed at the integrated capabilities test bed operated by the Product Director Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (PD C4ISR) and Network Modernization research and development (R&D) program within the RDECOM communications-electronics RD&E center (CERDEC), which provided a variety of radio infrastructure capabilities such as short range wireless (SRW), wideband networking waveform (WNW), Ad-Hoc Networking (ANW2), deployable 4G, Airborne relay, and connection to the US Army Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T).

“If you've ever seen the movie, 'Black Hawk Down,' the medic is trying to treat the guy with the artery issue in his leg; the medic goes through all his resources, and once he exhausted all his knowledge, he was stuck,” said lieutenant commander Carl Manemeit, BA, MA, of the MRMC's Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC). “If he had been connected to the surgeons back at the treatment facility, they could have given him more guidance on how to save that Soldier's life. By injecting this expertise, we might be able to do that one thing that could save some guy's life; that's what we're looking to do.”

“There's an information gap that lies between the point of injury on the field and point of treatment back at a medical facility,” said Gary Gilbert, PhD, TATRC research, development, test and evaluation program manager for Secure Telemedicine. “We need to do a better job of being able to record what the medic saw and did prior to the patient being evacuated to the treatment facility, and we want this record to be transmitted to the soldier's permanent health records.”

“Cellular technology could be the future of telehealth on the modern battlefield, but we need to know if it can be done, and if so, would it actually enhance the delivery of information,” added Jason Sypniewski, chief for PD C4ISR & Network Modernization's Integrated Event Design & Analysis branch. “As decision makers look at network modernization, this is the type of information they will want in order to help them make informed decisions regarding telemedicine capabilities and the networks on which they're going to ride. Our mission is to provide this.”

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US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command