Operational patient care pathway: building pragmatic medical interoperability through health engagements.

The future operational demand for medical support in Western militaries will likely outstrip available resources, necessitating burden-sharing through medical interoperability with allies and partners. However, the current North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) model of interoperability through standardisation, while achieving high levels of commonality and integration along the operational patient care pathway (OPCP), is high-cost and resource-intensive. We have termed this model assured interoperability.

Using nominal group technique to identify the planning considerations for UK Armed Forces medical personnel delivering defence engagement first aid training activities.

Introduction: Defence Medical Services personnel regularly deploy overseas to deliver training activities as part of defence engagement (DE) to positively influence partners and others. There remains scope for medical planners to enhance our understanding of how to optimally use medical staff and assets for DE. We aimed to develop a tool to improve planning for DE activities delivering first aid training.

Medics as influencers: a historical analysis of British Army military medical exercises in Kenya over two decades.

Introduction: Annual British Army medical training exercises have run in Kenya since the early 1990s, initially with a dual purpose-to deliver the Kenyan Extended Programme of Immunisation (in remote locations) and to undertake austere training. This provided a specific response to a capability gap request from the partner nation, but as this gap closed, the exercise changed in various ways. This study aimed to qualitatively explore the impact of these exercises on the Kenyan healthcare system and the influence and relationships between the nations.

Defence Engagement (Health): a historical perspective.

Defence Engagement (DE) (Health) themes are reviewed in this paper through two historical perspectives set in very different contexts. The first-person narrative in by Lindsay Rogers outlines the experience of a medical officer building capacity with Tito's Partisans behind enemy lines in Second World War Yugoslavia. This is contrasted with a more academic evaluation of strategic and medical benefits of DE (Health) delivered by the US military during the Vietnam War in Robert Wilensky's Both texts infer that clear objectives, supported by effective strategic communication, are required for the impact of DE (Health) to be fully realised.

Defence context for the UK's Defence Engagement (Health).

Defence Engagement (DE) has been a core UK Defence task since 2015. DE (Health) is the use of military medical capabilities to achieve DE effects within the health sector to achieve security and defence objectives. DE (Health) practitioners must understand the underlying defence context that shapes these objectives.