Charles River Analytics Inc, developer of intelligent systems solutions, has announced a contract to build a traumatic injury prediction tool for the US Army, as part of continued efforts in advanced, agile, customer-focused engineering. The Ensemble Prediction for Intelligent Combat Casualty Care, or EPIC3, mobile application aims to reduce the number of preventable deaths by addressing challenges faced by military and civilian first responders, combat lifesavers, and medics.
The United States Special Operations Command has developed tactical combat casualty care (TCCC) standards to increase battlefield survivability. Although these standards have reduced the percentage of preventable deaths, TCCC providers still face significant challenges. Multiple patients may need to be diagnosed and prioritized. Patients are assessed and tracked with physical paperwork, which may delay and complicate treatment. Some physiological signals may be difficult to interpret and require long-term focused attention. Also, some injuries, such as internal hemorrhages, may be difficult to identify and treat on the battlefield.
“Trauma care providers must quickly screen for potentially life-threatening injuries and then provide the appropriate care,” said Max Metzger, Software Engineer at Charles River and Principal Investigator on the EPIC3 effort. “We’re designing and developing the EPIC3 app to predict traumatic injury and other patient outcomes, providing a screening tool for ground medics and other trauma care providers. The app will present medical alerts and guidance to treat the injuries through a simple, easy-to-use interface that tailors itself to the needs and skill level of the user.”
EPIC3 builds on other techniques and mobile applications Charles River has developed to support Warfighters and predict traumatic injury, such as the TMT tourniquet training system and the PROMPTER training tool to improve battlefield first-aid skills, shown in the image. EPIC3 is built on a unique combination of components and technologies, including the Figaro™ probabilistic programming language, Methodology for Annotating Skill Trees (MAST), and the Sherlock™ platform for rapidly prototyping solutions to collect, analyze, visualize, and reason about human physiological, neurological, and behavioral state.
EPIC3 is Charles River’s latest effort in healthcare support and training, which includes surgical training systems, a first-aid training framework, artificial intelligence-enabled online communities to support recovering amputees, therapeutic applications, decision aids, healthcare data analytics, sensors and sensing technology, and mobile training technology. See other examples of our Healthcare Support and Training efforts.
This material is based upon work supported by the United States Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) under Contract No. W81XWH-16-C-0105. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USAMRAA.
