By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Starts & Stripes Mideast edition
Saturday, October 14, 2006
WASHINGTON — Soon dog tags might tell battlefield physicians more than just name and blood type.
According to military medical researchers, within the next three years the tags could have every injury, every surgery, and every checkup of a servicemember’s life on there, too.
Military officials working on ways to get vital medical information downrange are working on new electronic dog tags containing troops’ complete medical history, along with that traditional social security number, service, blood type and religious information.
Already about 13,500 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are wearing electronic dog tags in addition to their standard-issue ones.
The experimental models are essentially reinforced memory sticks, which can plug into any laptop and display every injury, illness and medication troops are taking.
Tommy Morris, chief information technology officer for the Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, said so far they’ve been a reliable resource, giving physicians on the front line more information to make decisions on injuries and illnesses.
He said the next generation in development will be wireless transmitters that medics will be able to read simply by holding a Personal Digital Assistant, or PDA, near a patient.
“The biggest problem we’re finding now is [that] the soldiers in the field don’t like having to pull the tags out of a wounded patient’s shirt and having to plug it in,” he said.
Military medical officials said the stamped-metal IDs will probably never fully disappear, since their simplicity and durability make them tough to fully replace.
But Morris said he expects the electronic versions to become just as common. The size and shape of the wireless versions is still under development, but he expects the finished product will be smaller than a business card and just as thin.
That means the tags could be embedded nearly anywhere on a soldier’s uniform: in a watch, on a belt or even in the existing metal dogs tags themselves.
“They really could go anywhere,” he said.
For now security and durability are still the main concerns. While having all that medical information in one place is a boon for military physicians, it could also be a potential weapon if captured by enemy troops.
And Morris said researchers are adapting to problems in the field — like sweat corroding the delicate electronics — to make sure the devices won’t fail in life-or-death situations.
The electronic tags are just the latest idea in the military’s ongoing efforts to keep critical medical information with troops wherever they travel.
On Thursday, defense health officials said they are still on track to have the new electronics medical records system, known as AHLTA, fully operational by December. The massive database will have clinical information on more than 9.2 million troops and military dependents, and be available to military facilities worldwide.
And nearly 30,000 medics in Iraq and Afghanistan are already carrying PDAs which can download and update information from that database, to give them a battlefield assessment tool and provide near real-time tracking of troops’ health.
You still think this might happen, after all Obama's DOD cutbacks?
