CHARLESTON, S.C. — A Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SSC) Atlantic team showed how the Theater Medical Information Program enables a Marine Corps Forward Resuscitative Surgical Suite and Shock Trauma Platoon (FRSS/STP) to deliver patient care more efficiently and effectively during a recent joint, multi-service training exercise at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.
SSC Atlantic took part in the exercise to showcase how the Theater Medical Information Program - Marine Corps (TMIP-MC) is integrated and utilized by Marine medical personnel in a deployed, kinetic environment. The exercise gave TMIP-MC Program Management Office (PMO) representatives insights into how the Marine Corps deploys, along with its operational medicine requirements and capabilities.
“The Global Medic exercise is a large, multiservice exercise that allows the services to train and operate together in a simulated, realistic combat environment, from point of injury through the continuum of care,” explained Cmdr. Thomas Shu, chief information medical officer for the Marine Corps and leader of the Marine Corps’ EHR rollout in theater. “The benefits of this exercise are that it not only brings our entire sister services together, but there are multiple partner nations participating.”
During the exercise, the TMIP-MC PMO and other DVs were able to observe units and end-users working in TMIP-Joint, TMIP-MC, Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4), and Medical Situational Awareness in the Theater (MSAT) programs. This information is especially valuable to the Marine Corps as they transition from TMIP-MC to the Joint Operational Medical Information System (JOMIS). JOMIS is tasked with pinpointing the needs and requirements for deployed Marines so they may be integrated into the Military Health System (MHS) Genesis. MHS Genesis is DoD’s new electronic health records system which will be standard across all services. For Marines, TMIP and JOMIS are focused on Marine needs and creating system capabilities with lightness and agility that can keep up with Marines on the ground.
TMIP was created to develop, deploy and sustain the electronic health record solution to operational and deployed forces across the range of military operations. TMIP is a tri-service system that integrates information from existing medical systems and provides it to deployed medical forces. TMIP supports all medical functional areas, including command and control, medical logistics, blood management, patient regulation and evacuation, medical threat/intelligence, health care delivery, manpower and training, medical capability assessment and sustainment analysis.
During the Fort McCoy exercise in August, patient movement to the FRSS/STP, patient triage/assessment, stabilization, surgery, patient recovery and transport to the next role of care were simulated. Initially, paper documentation was the primary means of patient care documentation, with tracking and regulation done on a dry-erase white board. Patient care information was then transcribed to TMIP-MC after triage/initial care was provided.
The FRSS/STP team saw the value of integrating electronic health record documentation during the exercise. Through Joining Reports and daily Medical Situation Reports submissions, the Marines’ FRSS/STP’s patient census and operating capabilities were integrated with the exercise’s MSAT capability. By the end of the second day on the ground, 21 simulated patients were brought in and treated by the USMC FRSS/STP.
The Defense Department operates 55 hospitals and more than 350 clinics across the globe, all of which will eventually be connected through MHS Genesis. With EHR capabilities live, service members’ health information will be entered into the MHS Genesis database from the time they enter boot camp. The new system will allow patients and doctors to easily share medical records with Veterans Affairs, as well as any private practices or military physicians.
While deploying the system in hospitals and clinics is important, deploying the technology to operational forces in theater is also crucial. The Global Medical Exercise at Fort McCoy gave valuable insights on the needs and requirements of deployed Marines.
The Marines’ systems must be light and agile. They will not be able to have large rack servers that other warfighters might have. The Corps is currently looking at options that include small laptops and handhelds that can work offline, which will then transfer data into the central database when plugged into the network.
“For the Marine Corps, we are not only able to demonstrate our medical and resuscitative capabilities, but this also offers us an opportunity to bring some future capabilities into a field environment,” said Shu. “In the end though, I believe that what this exercise shows is that we all operate and field very similar capabilities, not just within the DoD, but across our partner nations as well. We all have the same goal in the end no matter what uniform we wear,” he added.
SSC Atlantic delivers capabilities to the Naval, Joint and National Warfighter through the acquisition, development, integration, production, test, deployment and sustainment of interoperable command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (C4ISR), cyber and information technology (IT) solutions that provide information warfare capabilities for national defense.