The Army’s Tactical Combat Casualty Care Committee wants to see accurate yet rapid documentation used for pre-hospital treatment and interventions when caring for critically wounded soldiers. This is needed since first responder or medic documentation is often missing, inaccurate, unintelligible, or incomplete.
Current procedures call for first responders to fill out a form on patients they have treated. However, this form is rarely filled out or used further down in the treatment chain. So now, the Army wants to expand existing commercial or government voice and communication technologies to help develop an easy to use device capable of capturing critical clinical information from the first responder.
The currently fielded AHLTA-Mobile or (BMIST) provides limited documentation capability but is most suitable for sick calls or routing care provided at battalion aid stations. A successful documentation technology must be easy to use, non-intrusive, hands-free, fast, and be of help to first responders.
Creating a Medic Voice Documentation System (MVDS) would provide better and more accurate pre-hospital information. The device needs to be be produced at a low cost and low complexity. In addition, when reaching a combat support hospital or emergency room, the device needs to be capable of up linking to a digital voice file to go to a host server using wireless technology and USB interface.
On February 2, 2009, The U.S Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) released a Draft RFP due in February but proposals were not accepted—just comments on how to build the MVDS. Go to www.usamraa.army.mil/pages/homepage.cfm to read the Draft RFP then click on solicitations for more details on the Army’s MVDS project.
The U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) is the contracting element of the U.S Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) and provides support to the Command headquarters, laboratories, and medical logistics organizations. USAMRAA also supports Army-wide projects sponsored by the Army Surgeon General and numerous congressionally mandated programs.
