Tech Trends: Creating Simulation and Training Devices for the Military Medical Community
Article by: Beth Pettitt  (pettittb@stricom.army.mil) (Please see mini articles on next page). The human body is the most complicated "machine" known to man. As such modeling and simulating it requires the same attention to detail that we have given to warfighting machines such as tanks and aircraft. And, it is not just the human body and its response to trauma that we must model and simulate. It is also essential that we analyze the medics' response and the human body's response to medical intervention. As seen in the figure, we need to model and simulate the patient from the time the trauma occurs through the stabilization and evacuation process, through triaging at all levels of care (CAS, BAS and Hospital) and ultimately treating the patient, either virtually or on a human patient simulator type device. Some sort of AAR is also required. Just as military aviators, tank drivers and ground troops need simulators and integrated training systems; the military medical community has a need and desires to provide realistic human patient simulators and an integrated triage and training environment. What the medical simulation community would like to do is pick up where the warfighting simulation community stops. The types of injuries that are generated in wargames need to be transferred to the medical simulation community to more closely model the entire battlefield. With very limited research and development dollars, it has been essential for the medical community to leverage simulation advancements from the traditional warfighter simulation community as well as existing commercial medical technologies. Leveraging these different simulation resources necessitates a robust network architecture, facilitating accurate and timely transfer of data. As with any simulation, decisions must be made on what level of realism is required to provide an adequate training environment. For example, does the medic need to see the actual gun shot, or feel the bodies' temperature? Can we adequately represent the wound by modeling the body's complex physiological reaction to the wound? On the other hand, the more detailed physiological representation will provide more information to the medic, but require more information to be passed across a network, or in the case of medical modeling and simulation, a "virtual hospital ward." In addition to pulling in data on the type of weapons fired and the resulting types of injuries from existing warfighter simulations, the medical community may also benefit from logistics and resupply models. Many of the headmounted display technologies currently being researched and developed may also assist the medical simulation community by allowing the visual representations of wounds to be overlaid on human patient simulator devices. The following mini-articles (linked below)look at medical simulation and training from four different perspectives: "Interoperability in Medical Simulation" by Mikel Petty, IST describes an existing STRICOM managed program called the Combat Trauma Patient Simulation (CTPS) and discusses the network, HLA and FOM/SOM development; "Modeling in Full-Scale Patient Simulators", submitted by Ron Carovano, METI describes the development of human patient simulator devices; "The Aravis State Engine Server and Problem Based Scenarios", by Eric B. Allely, M.D., Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine describes a triage modeling methodology; And finally, "Patient Simulation Training" at Fort Indiantown Gap" by Major Karen Basehore, gives the users perspective on how these modeling and simulation techniques can train the military for many different military medical scenarios including chemical and biological injuries.
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