A Cognitive Agent Approach to MedNet Development

Emergency personnel deal with a range of acute problems resulting from battlefield gunshot and improvised explosive device trauma to accidents, terroristic acts, and a variety of other incidents. Front line medical personnel often encounter these problems away from communications and medical infrastructure and under situations where they must travel ‘light’ to get to casualties. MedNet exploits recent and coming advances in medical information technology including diagnostic decision support for acute-care patients, computerized patient records including highly portable mini-records, and even interactive lessons-learned databases. All may simplify interaction with front line medical personnel and providing a “force multiplier” diagnostic/treatment effect. An important objective of this project is to develop systems that integrate these applicable, yet disparate, technological advancements to quickly collect appropriate physiological data, process these inputs through appropriate decision-making resources, provide triage guidance and goals for next-steps in the work-ups of these patients, and ideally provide for real-time collection of new lessons-learned by means of mobile imaging and other means. In its MedNet Phase II project CHI Systems, Inc. will design and implement an operational system in which the MedNet Tag, Grid, and Database components function in synergistic and mutually sustaining fashion.