The Expeditionary Medical Facility Kuwait will this month become the first deployed military hospital able to get information about battlefield medical procedures from a U.S.-based central database using special software that all facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan should have by the end of the year.
That’s a major advance for in-theater medical operations because it gives all users of the software – the Theater Medical Information Program Composite Health Care System (TC2) – the ability to send the information they produce to the database and get details of procedures carried out on patients at other facilities.
“We’ll be able to learn what procedures have taken place at each facility that a service member visits without the hassles of trying to track down paper records,” said Capt. Daniel Hansen, EMF Kuwait chief of professional services.
Among other things, he said, timely access to accurate, digital information will help doctors avoid performing the same operation or treatment twice on a patient.
Before TC2 was developed, inpatient data never left the war zone hospital where it was documented. That data will now also be sent to the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application, the Defense Department’s electronic health record.
Decision-makers using the Army’s Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4) systems will also benefit from the upgrade, Hansen said, because commanders will be able to more closely track resources allocated to inpatient procedures.
MC4 has been active with other software upgrades that deliver improvements in medical capabilities.
It recently distributed 600 battlefield electronic health care systems to users in Afghanistan — which medical commanders there have described as the forgotten theater when it comes to battlefield eHealth. It also recently distributed software that allows users to view medical catalogs and order supplies online and keep track of inventories electronically.
MC4 plans to complete TC2 upgrades to all of its users in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
