The Bottom-line is Survivability: Enhancing Military Medicine with Automatic Identification of Casualties

by David C. Wyld Southeastern Louisiana University in Military, December 18, 2009

Battlefield medicine has remained largely unchanged since the days of your – using identification methods dating back to the Civil War and World War II. Now, automatic identification technologies are fast-changing casualty tracking and speeding care – making possible the highest likelihood of survivability for both military and civilian casualties. This RFID (radio frequency identification)-based technology is fast crossing-over to emergency services in non-military applications as well – for the benefit of all.

Introduction

For all the intense political controversy that has surrounded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for all the unfortunate deaths on both sides, there can be no doubt that these wars have been remarkable for many reasons. One of the most important long-term impacts of the wars will be the vast strides that have been made in battlefield medicine during the conflict. In fact, despite the horrific injuries sustained by thousands of American and coalition troops and support personnel, particularly stemming from the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), no war in history has seen a higher percentage of those combatants wounded in the field actually survive.

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In fact, of those wounded soldiers who are alive when brought to their first field hospital for treatment, a stunning 96 percent survive. In large part, the success of keeping American soldiers, airmen and sailors alive – along with many contractors and civilian casualties, can be attributed not just to the bravery of the medical personnel involved and the improvements in medical care and technology. No, one of the principal reasons behind this success is the introduction of the RFID tagging of casualties, which represents a quantum leap over military ID methods that have remained largely unchanged in the over 120 years since the US Civil War.

Old Patient Records Misplaced

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Unfortunately, tracking patients from the battlefield and through the military medical system has historically often been haphazard in nature. Patient records – such as they were – were most often in paper form, and even in the best of situations, were often lost, misplaced, or rendered unreadable. This was especially true when a casualty needed to be transferred. As reported in the Navy Times, it was quite common for a patient’s medical paperwork to be lost in the rotor wash of the helicopters, in the exhaust of jet aircraft, or simply bounced from the vehicle being used to transport them from facility to facility. If what were known as “triage tags” – bearing important medical information on the patient – were torn away or stained by fluids, a patient could easily be lost in the system.