U.S. military medics could be making better use of electronic health record tools in theater, according to overseas military medical officers who spoke via video hookup to the Military Health System’s annual conference in Washington.
At the same time, they noted that the military has made tremendous progress in e-medical records in recent years.
“We’re not using BMIS-T properly,” said Capt. Kevin Moore, commanding officer of the Expeditionary Medical Facility Kuwait, referring to the Battlefield Medical Information System-Tactical.
BMIS-T, now called AHLTA-Mobile, is an application that runs on a palm-held device. It provides warfighter health history to medics on the battlefield and lets them capture information on medical encounters when they are not connected to the network.
Moore’s main complaint was that theater medics are not using AHLTA-Mobile to perform the Military Acute Concussion Evaluation. MACE is a diagnostic tool that identifies and measures traumatic brain injury (TBI). An electronic MACE form is available on AHLTA-Mobile, Moore said.
Early evaluation of TBI could help get victims treated right away, said Col. Brian Lein, commander of the Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany. U.S. warfighters injured in Iraq often are evacuated to Landstuhl.
“We screen everyone coming through here for TBI,” Lein said. “We need better screening in theater so that we can start treatment sooner.”
Twenty-two percent of injured warfighters suffer from TBI, and 9 percent have moderate to severe cases, according to a Landstuhl study.
Lein also said that the military’s theater medical records are not interoperable with Landstuhl’s in-patient medical record system. “We have a huge cut-and-paste operation going on.”
“There is a need for complete and seamless connectivity,” said Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army’s surgeon general. “Right now we record information gathering for future use. We should also be mindful of the possibility that an electronic medical record can provide actionable intelligence.”
Whatever the hiccups, Lein has seen improvements in the system. “In 1993, we treated injured soldiers from Somalia,” he said. “All of their medical records were handwritten. We have come a long way from that world.”
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.
