SOF Critical Care Medical Tools

"SOF medics and operators require two pieces of FDA-approved equipment in order to provide critical care on the battlefield in many situations; a one-handed tourniquet, and an airway management device. While there are many devices on the commercial marketthat provide these functions for civilian applications, there are no products designed to meet the unique requirements of the SOF. This proposal addresses problems that are encountered by Special Operation Forces (SOF) medics with existing emergencymedical tourniquets and airway devices. SOF places unique demands on medical equipment, driven by the types of operations they perform, the austere location that they operate in, and their remoteness from conventional military medical support. Theperformance requirements of equipment used by SOF medics differ significantly from civilian, Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), and hospital practices that drive the design of modern emergency medical equipment. This proposal plans to meet the needs ofSOF for specially designed critical care medical tools with an innovative solution. Our approach to this problem combines a COTS-based mechanism that is specifically modified to meet the multiple needs of the SOF with an electronics package that deliverreal-time spoken care instructions to potentially untrained users under duress. This solution meets the SOF needs through a medical tool that is lightweight, compact, and engineered for rapid battlef