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). More...