U.S. Navy Mobile Medical Monitor
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The delivery of state-of-the-art healthcare continues to be a top priority for the military. The rapid assessment, triage, and transport of sick or injured personnel will continue to play a key role in reducing morbidity and mortality during wartime on the battlefield or during peacetime and humanitarian missions.
A portable medical device known as the Mobile Medical Monitor (M3) was developed and designed to be used in the field to support injury assessment through real-time vital signs monitoring. The vital signs monitored included EKG, blood pressure, pulse oximetry, and ultrasound. Because standard medical devices are usually large, expensive, and non-mobile, this program was one of the first attempts to consolidate and miniaturize off-the-shelf medical devices into an open-systems personal computer-based systems architecture. In this system, the multiple FDA-approved sensors were integrated into a portable, rugged existing military platform that allowed medical data to be transmitted over existing military bandwidth. Standard communications interfaces and existing data transfer protocols provided an exceptionally efficient method that improved healthcare for deployed forces. This important project represented successful implementation of 3 Congressional line items. As an employee of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Dr. Mark Wiederhold was the inventor of the Mobile Medical Monitor and was responsible for achieving FDA approval of the device in 4 months.
