In addition:

Since its inception in 1999, MC4 has deployed 5,000+ systems to more than 200 units for contingency operations supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. MC4 has also trained more than 10,000 deployable medical professionals and maintains its 24-7 customer support structure throughout the world. Headquartered at Fort Detrick, Md., MC4 is under the oversight of the Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) at Fort Belvoir, Va...

... PMO MC4 partners with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (JHU APL) to perform systems engineering, configuration management and developmental testing. MC4 works with experts from the Titan Corporation to perform systems integration and post-deployment system support. For logistical support, system administration and the training and fielding of new equipment, MC4 relies on Anteon International Corporation's professionals to accomplish their mission.

Those of you interested in attending the demonstration, please let us know: we can forward to you the email of the press release.

Read more about the system at the Military Medical Technology...

Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4) System website...

The website...

(hat tip: Clinical Cases and Images - Blog)

The Navy NewsStand says that the system is a part of larger initiative from the Department of Defense:

CHCSII will allow medical personnel to enter patient information directly into an electronic medical record without needing to first handwrite the record of the visit.

CHCSII will maintain the digital information in a centralized database, creating a comprehensive, life-long, computer-based patient record for each and every military health beneficiary. Furthermore, since the program acts as a database, hospital functions like laboratory, radiology and pathology test results will be faster. CHCSII will also improve patient safety through automatic alerts of potential allergic reactions and drug-to-drug interactions.

"CHCSII implementation at our medical center is an exciting endeavor that will keep our staff functioning on the cutting edge of technology," said Capt. Mark Olesen, National Naval Medical Center's deputy commander. "This is a great change for our staff and patients, because it propels us into the future of medicine, which is a world of immediate digital access, virtually unlimited and everlasting information storage capacity, and world-wide connectivity."

Although CHCSII will not immediately eliminate the use of paper records, as hospital officials point out, it is the first step toward a more efficient and integrated Navy Medicine.

"The Navy currently maintains more than 500 military treatment facilities throughout the fleet; each with their own paper records keeping department. CHCSII will connect us all to each other with the click of a keypad," said Capt. Kenneth Senn, CHCSII project officer at the hospital. "Eventually, after CHCSII is implemented worldwide, a sick or injured Sailor treated on a ship halfway around the world can be transferred to Bethesda and all of his medical information is accessible -- even if he didn't have time to grab his paper record."

While the new system will benefit Navy Medicine, CHCSII is not a sea service specific initiative and is, in fact, designed to improve joint military medical operations. Proponents of the program have said CHCSII will improve interoperability between the branch services' health care systems through the use of one centralized system instead of the current separate medical structures for each branch.

"Enterprise-wide implementation of this system will support the commitment of the Defense Department to conduct population health management throughout the [Military Health System]," Senn said.

More at the Navy NewsStand...

(hat tip: Medical Informatics Insider)

More about the system from Pacific Northwest National Lab:

At the heart of TacMedCS is a radio-frequency (RF) tag, encapsulated in rubber, that Pacific Northwest engineers built to be the same size as a metal dog tag. The RF tag is a futuristic medical chart-an electronic record of the person's medical condition, blood type and allergies.

"We're applying a flexible, easy-to-use technology in a way that allows Navy corpsmen to provide better and faster treatment," said Ron Gilbert, Pacific Northwest engineer. "The faster a corpsman can treat one patient, the sooner he can reach the next injured person. Our goal is to make their job as simple as possible."

Pacific Northwest engineers collaborated with the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory, or NAMRL, of Pensacola, Fla., and Navy corpsmen who provided expertise on the demands of their jobs and how the medical system could be designed to help them do their jobs more efficiently.

Based on that input, Pacific Northwest engineers designed the RF dog tag to be read from up to four feet away in less than one second, which frees up more time for treating injuries.

TacMedCS also improves upon the paper tag system Navy corpsmen use to record treatment information. This tag, called a triage tag, can be an unreliable record if it gets torn or stained.

The RF tag developed by Pacific Northwest engineers consists of a tiny silicon chip and antenna and can store up to 110 characters of information. Using TacMedCS, corpsmen will carry electronic devices, called interrogators, that beam radio-frequency waves and "read" data recorded on the tag. The data is uploaded almost instantaneously into a program stored on a miniaturized hand-held computer.

A computer program automatically formats the sailor or marine's information onto a screen, where a corpsman simply points and clicks to indicate alertness, location and type of injury. Information on how the patient was treated can be programmed back into the RF dog tag. Using a global-positioning system, the corpsman also sends the location of the wounded sailor or marine to the tag and command center personnel, who can coordinate transport of multiple patients according to severity of wounds. The ability to expedite transport is important to corpsmen who are responsible for medical care of an entire unit.

The Navy Times article...

UC-Logic Technology Corp., a leading designer and manufacturer of digitizers and pen input devices, will unveil its latest portable note taking device, dubbed the LaPazz D-Note digital note recorder, at Computex 2005 in Taipei.

The D-Note DNA500 consists of a lightweight, ultra-portable digital notepad that allows users to instantly capture notes or diagrams written in ink on normal paper and store them as digital pages in a built-in flash memory . Users can then transfer their digitized notes to a PC for viewing, editing, or sharing by e-mail...

The D-Note is a standalone device that can be deployed in any situation where both a paper hardcopy and a digitized soft copy are required, like while making meeting minutes and lecture notes, but also in the electronic capture of signatures, the processing of police and medical records, or to conduct polls and the completion of forms.

The press release...

More at UC-Logic Technology...

Via Wired, a good overview of digital medical record keeping, from both the physician's side as well as new tools for the patient. The online service is iHealthRecord:

Connie Grimstad doesn't need to call her doctor's office when she has a question about the slew of medications she takes daily -- the 57-year-old homemaker simply delves into her medical records from her home computer. As the medical industry moves slowly to replace its paper files with electronic versions, people like Grimstad are light years ahead of most doctors.

She's among about 10,000 Americans who've made the leap with a free online service that permits anyone to create their own electronic personal health record -- and access it anywhere through the Internet. With a few keystrokes, everything's there: the details of her prescriptions, health insurance records, diagnoses and surgeries.

Granted, it's far easier for consumers to go digital than it is for physicians, given the technology overhauls often involved. It took Grimstad an hour to type her medical history into her iHealthRecord account with San Francisco company Medem.

This system affords patients some peace of mind when traveling or seeing new doctors. But the real solution will come when physicians adopt similar systems.

More at Medem...

Doctors and other health care providers nationwide are turning to standardized protocols, based on scientifically proven guidelines, to enhance the treatment they provide. This emerging field is sometimes called evidence-based medicine, and advocates say it promises to improve patient care, reduce mistakes and lower health care costs.

"We're trying to take our very nice art of medicine and turn it into an engineered process," said Dr. G. Daniel Martich, vice president of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's electronic medical records project. "It makes the right thing to do the easiest thing to do, and because of that, it's the cheapest thing to do."

Treatment guidelines in the form of computer prompts and reminders have been making their way into several UPMC hospitals and affiliated doctors' offices in recent years. The $402 million deal UPMC recently inked with IBM Corp. is expected to speed implementation of evidence based-medicine over the eight-year life of the agreement.

Here's how: UPMC will get some 20,000 new computer terminals and other gear as part of the deal. More significant, each partner will contribute $25 million to what is essentially a venture capital fund, which could grow to $200 million. Among other things, the money will be used to develop computerlike devices, software and other products...

Bringing evidence-based medicine to the patient bedside already has begun in several of UPMC's 18 hospitals. In Presby's intensive care unit, for example, computer software reminds physicians who are entering medical orders that keeping a patient's head elevated 30 degrees can reduce the possibility of pneumonia, said Dr. Martich, who is co-director of Presby's Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit.

Even in O'Canada the progress is being made.

From the press release:

MC4 will work with Insight Public Sector, a leading provider of IT products and services for federal governmental divisions and agencies, including the United States Army, to deploy over 11,000 Windows Mobile-based HP Pocket PC handheld devices with Pointsec for Pocket PC encryption technology to its highly-trained medical staff. These devices will be used by Army medical professionals all over the world, especially in the combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With mobile medical teams treating soldiers in hostile environments, patient information must be readily available, easily transferable to treatment centers and absolutely secure. After fierce competition and successful field trials, the Army is now deploying Pointsec for Pocket PC across the board, driven in part by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requirements.

MC4's mission is to eliminate unreliable paper-based systems and replace them with an automated medical digitization system for soldier care. MC4 is taking the technology of telemedicine and other existing automation systems in medical and support facilities and integrating for combat support. MC4 links healthcare providers, medical diagnostic systems, information command and control, and medical command and control systems at all echelons.

More on Pointsec's intuitive encryption technology...