The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous disruption to the U.S. healthcare system and nearly crippled some hospitals during large patient surges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe potential impact of large-scale combat operations and multidomain operations against peer adversaries poses significant challenges to the Military Health System including large volumes of critically ill and injured casualties, prolonged care times in austere care contexts, limited movement, contested logistics, and denied communications. These challenges contribute to the probability of higher casualty mortality and risk that casualty care hinders commanders' forward momentum or opportunities for overmatch on the battlefield. Novel technical solutions and associated concepts of operation that fundamentally change the delivery of casualty care are necessary to achieve desired medical outcomes that include maximizing Warfighter battle-readiness, minimizing return-to-duty time, optimizing medical evacuation that clears casualties from the battlefield while minimizing casualty morbidity and mortality, and minimizing resource consumption across the care continuum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To determine the impact of telementoring on caregiver performance during a high-fidelity medical simulation model (HFMSM) of a critically ill patient in a resource-limited setting.
Design: A two-center, randomized, controlled study using a HFMSM of a patient with community-acquired pneumonia complicated by acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Setting: A notional clinic in a remote location staffed by a single clinician and nonmedical assistant.
Purpose Of Review: This article summarizes recent developments in the application of telemedicine, specifically tele-critical care (TCC), toward enhancing patient care during various types of emergencies and patient rescue scenarios when there are limited resources in terms of staff expertise (i.e., knowledge, skills, and abilities), staffing numbers, space, and supplies due to patient location (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2020, the U.S. Department of Defense officially disclosed a set of ethical principles to guide the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies on future battlefields.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Future combat environments will be complex, making effective care for multi-domain battlefield injuries more challenging. Technology and resources are essential to reduce provider burden enabling more accurate assessments, decision-making support, expanded treatment, and outcome improvements. Experimentation exercises to evaluate concepts and technologies to incorporate into the Army's future force ensure rapid and continuous integration across air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace domains to overmatch adversaries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnalysis and review of combat casualty care challenges in future large-scale and medical multi-domain operations from the perspective of past, present, and potential future conflicts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The ADvanced VIrtual Support for OpeRational Forces (ADVISOR) program is a synchronous telemedicine system developed in 2017 to provide 24/7 remote expert support to U.S. Military and NATO clinicians engaged in medical care in austere locations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Combat medics are required to perform highly technical medical procedures in austere environments with minimal error. Effective means to quantify medic performance in field and simulated environments are critical to optimize medic training procedures as well as to evaluate the influence of medical equipment and other supportive technologies on medic performance. Human performance evaluation in combat casualty care presents many unique challenges due to the unique environment (battlefields) and population (medics) that must be represented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The US Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR) spans 20 nations in the Middle East, Central, and South Asia. Evacuations outside this AOR include all injury types and severities; however, it remains unclear what proportion of evacuations were due to disease and non-battle injuries (DNBI). Understanding these patterns may be useful for defining future medical support requirements for multi domain operations (MDO).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The Military Health System mission is to provide medical care throughout the globe to service members and beneficiaries. To achieve this mission in the most austere of locations, telemedical support is an essential force multiplier when robust in-person medical support is not feasible. This led to the development of a telemedical solution initially known as the Virtual Critical Care Consultation service which provided tele-critical care assistance to downrange providers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Most high-fidelity medical simulation is of limited duration, used for education and training, and rarely intended to study medical technology. U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Tele-critical care (TCC) has improved outcomes in civilian hospitals and military treatment facilities (MTFs). Tele-critical care has the potential to concurrently support MTFs and operational environments and could increase capacity and capability during mass casualty events. TCC services distributed across multiple hub sites may flexibly adapt to rapid changes in patient volume and complexity to fully optimize resources.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial distancing as a technique to limit transmission of infectious disease has come into common parlance following the arrival and rapid spread of a novel coronavirus disease around the world in 2019 and 2020. But in the face of an emerging pandemic threat, it is crucial that we start to apply these principles to the clinic, the emergency department, and the hospital ward. We propose that this dynamic situation calls for a parallel "Clinical Distancing" in which we as a medical culture go against many of our fundamental instincts and, at least in the short term, begin to reduce unnecessary patient-care contacts for the benefit of our patients and our ability to continue to provide care to those who need it most.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To define the role of the intensivist in the initiation and management of patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
Design: Retrospective review of the literature and expert consensus.
Setting: Series of in-person meetings, conference calls, and emails from January 2018 to March 2019.
Objectives: In 2014, the Tele-ICU Committee of the Society of Critical Care Medicine published an article regarding the state of ICU telemedicine, one better defined today as tele-critical care. Given the rapid evolution in the field, the authors now provide an updated review.
Data Sources And Study Selection: We searched PubMed and OVID for peer-reviewed literature published between 2010 and 2018 related to significant developments in tele-critical care, including its prevalence, function, activity, and technologies.
Austere clinical environments are those in which limited resources hamper the achievement of optimal patient outcomes. Operational environments are those in which caregivers and resources are at risk for harm. Military and civilian caregivers experience these environments in the context of war, natural disasters, humanitarian assistance missions, and mass casualty events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The electronic medical record (EMR) is presumed to support clinician decisions by documenting and retrieving patient information. Research shows that the EMR variably affects patient care and clinical decision making. The way information is presented likely has a significant impact on this variability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Tele-Intensive Care Unit (tele-ICU) is care provided to critically ill patients by remote clinicians using audio, and video communications and network resources to access real-time patient information from physiologic monitors and the electronic medical record. Tele-ICU has been demonstrated in civilian healthcare to reduce mortality, improve care quality and safety, decrease intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay (LOS) and ventilator days, and save money. General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital (GLWACH) is a small medical treatment facility with limited resources with respect to subspecialists and ancillary services.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReview the application of telemedicine support for managing a patient with possible sepsis, suspected malaria, and unusual musculoskeletal symptoms. Clinical Context: Regionally Aligned Forces (RAF) supporting US Army Africa/Southern European Task Force (USARAF/ SETAF) in the Africa Command area of responsibility. Care provided by a small Role I facility on the compound.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: U.S. military forces have engaged in combat in mature areas of operations (AOs) in Iraq and Afghanistan that allow for casualty evacuation to definitive surgical care within "The Golden Hour.
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