Today, battlefield digitalization is being taken a step further as graphical situational awareness systems based on real-time data processing come into play. A Polish scientific-industrial consortium of the Military University of Technology, the Military Medical Institute, and engineers from TELDAT are working on implementing a quite revolutionary “Medical evacuation decision support system based on monitoring the soldier’s vital signs and augmented situational awareness.”
“The key idea of the system is that the collected medical information should be transmitted as quickly as possible, in real-time, to decision-makers, both in the medical and command divisions,” emphasizes Piotr Łubkowski, Ph.D., project manager from the Military University of Technology. In the simplest terms, the system consists of a network of sensors placed in elements of uniforms and equipment together with the appropriate software. The system’s task is to monitor the soldiers’ vital functions and integrate this data with the battlefield management system at the tactical level. This means, more or less, that medics will have a constant overview of a soldier’s condition and position on a digital map depicting the situation on the battlefield.
But that is not all. The system’s main task is to support decision-making regarding the evacuation of the wounded and its sequence, which is done through automatically assigned color codes per the NATO standard: Green – received by soldiers whose lives are not in danger. Yellow – soldiers who require medical intervention, but these actions can be delayed for about 24 hours without risk to their lives. Red – soldiers who need urgent and priority assistance. Black – the most severely injured soldiers whose lives cannot be saved regardless of the type of assistance given.
According to the consortium representatives, the technology demonstrator is to be created in two years.
