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AMERICA’S ARMY WINNING IN A COMPLEX WORLD

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treatment of injuries and return to duty or civilian life. Ongoing efforts<br />

address multiple threats to our Soldiers’ health and readiness. The<br />

Medical S&T Portfolio’s mission is to develop capabilities that ensure<br />

forces sustain optimal health, are protected from disease and injury, and<br />

receive optimal care in the event of injury or illness.<br />

The Medical S&T Portfolio investment strategy covers subportfolios<br />

that include clinical and rehabilitative medicine, combat casualty<br />

care, military infectious disease, military operational medicine and<br />

systems biology. The Medical S&T Portfolio is focused on materiel and<br />

knowledge-based medical solutions including the delivery of improved<br />

combat casualty care, enhanced survivability, reduced impact due to<br />

injury and optimized downrange medical footprint. The portfolio also<br />

is seeking ways to enhance recovery, rehabilitation and reintegration of<br />

our Wounded Warriors in terms of duty, performance and quality of life.<br />

The portfolio is also developing capability options to improve diagnosis,<br />

prevention and treatment of diseases with major impact on mission<br />

effectiveness and will enhance physiological performance in a variety<br />

of mission settings through solutions focused on maintaining, restoring<br />

and improving warfighter health and readiness, injury prevention and<br />

reduction, environmental health and protection, and psychological<br />

health and resilience. The Medical S&T Portfolio is preserving combat<br />

effectiveness and survivability through medical countermeasures to<br />

chemical and biological threats and clinical diagnostic capabilities.<br />

Industry partners are an integral part of medical capability development<br />

and fielding. Army medical S&T labs collaborate with university<br />

and industrial partners to develop diagnostic tools and medical<br />

countermeasures (vaccines, therapeutics), in addition to capitalizing on<br />

the industrial base for use of diagnostic equipment supporting both the<br />

continental U.S. and deployed medical functions.<br />

For example, Psychological<br />

Health and Resilience and<br />

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)<br />

research efforts support laboratory<br />

validation studies and field<br />

demonstrations of biomedical<br />

products designed to counteract<br />

myriad environmental and<br />

physiological stressors and materiel<br />

hazards Soldiers encounter in training and operational environments.<br />

The resulting biomedical capabilities are focused on protecting,<br />

sustaining and enhancing Soldiers’ cognitive, physiological, physical<br />

and social performance. Key efforts are providing capability solutions in<br />

the form of technologies and tools that enhance warfighter survivability,<br />

assessment and prediction of injuries, assessments for postconcussive<br />

syndrome, and enhancing performance during continuous operations.<br />

Physiological health and environmental protection, injury prevention<br />

and reduction and psychological health and resilience are the three main<br />

thrust areas.<br />

The Army’s Infectious Diseases<br />

(Drugs and Vaccines) efforts will<br />

mature and demonstrate medical<br />

countermeasures, such as drugs<br />

and vaccines, and diagnostic<br />

tools for wound infections and<br />

militarily important naturally<br />

occurring infectious diseases<br />

yielding capabilities approved by<br />

the Food and Drug Administration. Research priorities are identified<br />

by worldwide medical surveillance and military threat analysis. These<br />

S&T efforts also support testing of personal protective measures such<br />

as repellents and insecticides regulated by the Environmental Protection<br />

Agency. The portfolio also develops and evaluates vaccine candidates to<br />

prevent diseases that impact warfighter readiness, such as the three major<br />

WEAPON SYSTEMS HANDBOOK 2016 349

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