Warfighter Physiological and Environmental Monitoring: A Study for the U.S. Army Research Institute in Environmental Medicine and the Soldier Systems Center

摘要

An unprecedented opportunity exists to introduce real-time physiological and environmental monitoring technology into future US Army dismounted forces for use in both training and combat situations. The motivation is to enhance the survivability of the individual warfighter and to provide increased situational awareness to both combat medics and commanders during the course of a mission or field operation. The monitoring technology must be reliable, must be unobtrusive, and compelling in terms of value to both the lowest-echelon warfighters and their command chain. Realizing these objectives will require adapting and extending ambulatory medical monitoring technology well beyond the capabilities of current commercial devices and systems, and will place the US Army in a unique position with regard to real- time physiological status and health monitoring. This report identifies specific technology and system level issues that must be addressed to realize the objective system and proposes both a near-term and far-term system concept and development strategy. Technology developments critical to success include covert wireless personal area networking, physiological and environmental sensors hardened for the dynamic warfighter environment, and real-time data processing and fusion algorithms to extract the relevant physiological information and overall health status.