Decision Support System Proposal for Medical Evacuations in Military Operations

Sensors (Basel). 2023 May 28;23(11):5144. doi: 10.3390/s23115144.

Abstract

The area of military operations is a big challenge for medical support. A particularly important factor that allows medical services to react quickly in the case of mass casualties is the ability to rapidly evacuation of wounded soldiers from a battlefield. To meet this requirement, an effective medical evacuation system is essential. The paper presented the architecture of the electronically supported decision support system for medical evacuation during military operations. The system can also be used by other services such as police or fire service. The system meets the requirements for tactical combat casualty care procedures and is composed of following elements: measurement subsystem, data transmission subsystem and analysis and inference subsystem. The system, based on the continuous monitoring of selected soldiers' vital signs and biomedical signals, automatically proposes a medical segregation of wounded soldiers (medical triage). The information on the triage was visualized using the Headquarters Management System for medical personnel (first responders, medical officers, medical evacuation groups) and for commanders, if required. All elements of the architecture were described in the paper.

Keywords: biomedical signals measurement; decision support system; enterprise architecture; medical evacuation; vital signs measurement.

MeSH terms

  • Decision Support Techniques
  • Humans
  • Military Personnel*
  • Triage / methods
  • Warfare
  • Wounds and Injuries*