TACTiCAl MEDiCAl TriAgE SYSTEM - Harris Corporation

THE OPERATIONAL challenge
Seamless capture and transfer of medical data
to save lives on the battlefield
Combat medics must not only treat patients under
battlefield conditions, but also document the injuries
and their treatment. This information needs to be rapidly
dispatched to a medical center so that time-critical care can be
planned and provided. Currently there is no integrated system
that supports both the recording and transmission of this
medical data in theater. Doctors are therefore not receiving this
important—sometimes lifesaving—information quickly enough
to effectively manage treatment.
Today’s in-field data capture methods do not provide a quick and
efficient means for recording medical information. The standard
method is to simply write on a patient’s body or a paper form
with a grease pencil. More advanced methods involve using a
PDA to generate an electronic record, but these have numerous
drawbacks. The complicated user interface makes them
cumbersome and difficult to use. In fact, the process of collecting
data at the time of an injury typically requires extensive use of
both hands. This can interfere with overall patient care or require
additional assistance for transcription.
Another major drawback with current systems is that the injury
and treatment data remains with the patient or medic; this
information can be easily lost or compromised in the field.
Doctors are therefore not prepared to immediately treat the
patient, and critical care is delayed while the pertinent data is
collected again.
Many militaries have established medical data repositories
to ensure that injury data and medical treatment information
are available for follow-on treatments, rehabilitation, and
determination of wartime benefits. Since the data manually
captured at the point of injury does not automatically populate
a centralized data repository, the medic must manually enter
the information into a computer at the treatment facility. Any
information that was recorded on a PDA-based system also
requires an additional step to synchronize it with the database,
since current devices do not transmit the data over tactical radio
networks.
The main liabilities of the current systems include:
l Inability to supply triage data to doctors prior to patient arrival
l Manual data entry methods that require the use of one or
both hands
l Inability to wirelessly transmit data to or update medical
databases
l Documentation of medical status requires additional steps
l Data from the point of injury is often lost or damaged,
possibly impacting outcomes
The optimal solution would convey medical triage data from field
medics to waiting doctors—and into the healthcare system at
large—with a design that is both cost-effective and adaptable to