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E-health allows medics to soldier on

The US Army’s computerised Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care system is now being used in its military medical facilities in 14 countries.

A US military e-health programme being used in battle zones and military hospitals is having a profound effect on patient care by allowing immediate access to health records.

The Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care Programme, or MC4, began in 2003 and deploys laptops and handheld computers to capture electronic medical records.

It has been such a success that April saw a major expansion of the programme, in which the technology was deployed beyond US Army locations to Air Force sites and some Navy and Marine stations in 14 countries.

More than five million electronic medical records have been created since the programme started, at an annual operational cost of $10 million to the US Government. About 26,000 military personnel – including medics, doctors and nurses – have been trained on 24,000 pieces of hardware, including handhelds, laptops, servers and printers.

“By having access to this technology and these systems, I truly can participate in a global medical record,” said Air Force Col. Dr John Mansfield, a doctor at Balad Air Force Base, about 40 miles north of Baghdad.

Quick access

He said that quick access to medical records can be vital when treating a soldier or patient, adding as one example that a colleague was able to track years of blood tests for a soldier reporting problems in Iraq, reaching back to the tests done Stateside in a matter of seconds.

The MC4 system uses voice-recognition software to create medical records. The software then runs on laptops that can be accessed anywhere from operating rooms in hospitals to isolated locations out in the military field. The voice-recognition software is faster and more thorough than typing, and allows for detailed description of wounds and injuries.

Troubleshooting

The US Army has also responded to feedback about the programme and has employed systems personnel to troubleshoot IT problems in the field.

Currently, IT experts are working on developing the technology that would allow medics to use a single password to access different applications.

“The medical community has got to get away from old records systems,” said Dr Mansfield. “You can’t read them if you can’t find them.” He added that he has accessed health records via a rugged laptop in the Balad hospital and in other locations ‘hundreds of times’, and averages a dozen patient visits and three to four surgeries per day.

Army Master Sgt. Wynton Hodges has used MC4 as both medic and patient. In 2006, he was trained as a medic to use Motorola’s MC70 and Hewlett-Packard’s Ipaq handheld computers to gather injury data on the battlefield in Iraq.

“You can imagine what it must have been like 20 years ago if a doctor had to rely on an injured patient to give their own medical history,” he said. “Now we have a system that allows us to see firsthand what type of treatment was received not only moments ago, but long ago in the past, as well.”

Invaluable data

The system’s worth was really made apparent to him when, on a mission in Iraq, he broke an ankle. All the data from that treatment was electronically recorded and became invaluable a year later when he was back in the US and examined for leg pain.

“What was key for me was that over a year later, I couldn’t possibly remember all the procedures I had gone through as an injured soldier, but I had the electronic database,” he said.

The programme not only provides greater efficiencies in care, but also gives military personnel an accurate record to use years later. With good medical records, a veteran can obtain care under veterans’ benefits that he or she might otherwise have to pay for out of pocket or through another insurance plan.

In 1997, then-President Bill Clinton laid out plans for a medical tracking system for military personnel on the battlefield, which led to the creation of MC4.

The programme was in response to thousands of Gulf War service members who returned without proof of combat-related injuries and illnesses, resulting in loss of benefits.

MC4 has managed to control its costs by using commercially available hardware, as well as software provided free in a Department of Defense programme that allows sharing of healthcare software that is already being used at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington but can be tailored for battlefield uses.

Posted in Information Technology on 01 July 2008
Tags: e-health