"Strong Angel" is an experiment in Civil-Military Operations for
Humanitarian
Assistance
Project Strong Angel is a humanitarian focused extension to the RIMPAC
2000
Naval exercise conducted jointly by the Pacific Rim countries.
The Strong Angel project is bringing focus, energy and resources to the
development of new knowledge for refining advanced applications of
emerging technologies to
meet the requirements of developing a globally deployable, intelligently
configurable medical communication matrix
"methods and metrics for mapping the medical matrix"
This is a world class adventure/learning experience in Interventional
Informatics and Distributed Medical Intelligence
The major opportunities of this project come from the development of an
"open" Civil-Military Operations Center -CMOC This has been made possible
by
LCDR Eric Rasmussen, Fleet Surgeon for Third Fleet who has taken a
personal and professional risk in allowing the participation of
non-military medical
communications teams in what has to date been a purely military event. Ie
RIMPAC
"To our knowledge, no exercise effort like this has ever taken place.
There will be much to develop, much to learn, and probably a remarkable
degree of helpful hindsight
afterwards."
The great opportunity here is to conduct experiments that test new
biomedical technologies and communications systems in applications that
can dramatically enhance our
ability to collaborate and, effectively respond to humanitarian needs
created from emerging disasters.
((It is expected that the lessons learned from Project Strong Angel will
be utilized in the follow on project, in the fall of 2000, where, during
the Humanitarian "Mission to
the Americas", the MERCY naval hospital ship will be deployed to the west
coast of Central America to 3 ports devastated by hurricane
Mitch.))
The Strong Angel Project will help define technical capabilities that must
be provided by an intelligent medical communication matrix in order to
support a variety of
biomedical applications. such as health care, biomedical research, public
health monitoring, and health education.
One of the intended outcomes of this open exercise will be to catalyze
partnerships with governmental and private sector organizations for the
purpose of developing an
operational global emergency response capability.
Thus there will be an extensive experimental component to Strong Angel.
dedicated to the trials of information management in an austere
environment.
These experiments run the gamut from high-bandwidth video-teleconference
support, to the interviewing of refugees for war-crimes documentation
using digital
transcription, to solar powered computer systems.
Testing of an intelligent medical communication matrix
A medical communication matrix, comprised by a heterogeneous array of
networked and "roaming" communication assets, biosensors and distributed
knowledge
resources with intermittent connectivity and various bandwidths and
protocols will be configured and systematically tested.
Applications such as provision of health care in a humanitarian crisis,
transmitting reliable biomedical sensor data, public health monitoring,
health education and medical
knowledge on demand services will be tested in an environment designed to
provide a realistic measure for determining the actual usability,
reliability and operational
functionality needed to support such a variety of biomedical
communications applications which will be needed to effectively respond to
real world needs.
Some of the intended outcomes-
Study the impact of new infrastructure, services and applications in the
design and implementation of an operational global emergency response
capability.
Promote experimentation with the next generation of medical communications
technologies, in ways that will allow us to examine the demands for
technical characteristics
such as bandwidth, quality of service, security, and access; and recommend
an appropriate strategy for implementing these capabilities in future
instantiations
Coordinate adoption of agreed working standards and common practices among
participating institutions to ensure end-to-end quality of service and
interoperability
Refine experiments to test enhanced delivery of services (e.g., health
care, environmental monitoring) by taking advantage of "virtual proximity"
created by an advanced
communications infrastructure.
We intend to refine our ability to test experimental protocols which can
facilitate development, adoption, deployment, and operation of an
affordable communications
infrastructure, capable of supporting differentiated Quality of Service
(QoS) based on applications requirements of effectively responding to an
emerging humanitarian crisis
in a wide variety of regionally specific constraints.
