US Department of Defense
BLAST INJURY RESEARCH PROGRAM
COORDINATING OFFICE
The Department of Defense program for coordinating medical research for the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of blast injuries

Facilitating Collaboration Within and Outside of the Department of Defense (DoD)

United States (US)-India Medical Strategic Initiatives Working Group

The PCO provides Executive Agent (EA) oversight for the US–India Medical Strategic Initiatives Working Group within the Armed Services Biomedical Research, Evaluation, and Management (ASBREM) Community of Interest (COI). The Medical Strategic Initiatives Working Group, established by the Chair of the ASBREM COI, provides guidance, encourages collaboration, and facilitates cooperative medical research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E;) projects between the US and India. The Medical Strategic Initiatives Working Group, in coordination with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E;)), and Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), Indian Ministry of Defence, is helping to organize joint US–India medical and chemical/biological workshops in the Fall of 2016.

United States (US)-India Collaboration on Models for Blast and Blunt TBI

The PCO director participated in the kickoff meeting for a collaborative, US-India blast injury research three-year project project on, "Experimental and Computational Studies of Blast and Blunt Traumatic Brain Injury." This project was approved by Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (USD (ATL)) under the Defense Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI). The kickoff meeting, held August 1-5, 2016 at the Institute of Nuclear Medicine & Allied Sciences (INMAS), Delhi, India, was a success. A comprehensive project plan with detailed descriptions of the tasks which will be performed by each member of the U.S. and India (INMAS) teams was developed and a project timeline was designed and created to achieve the following objectives:

  • A validated animal model of blast-induced mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI)
  • An anatomically accurate computational models of blast and impact-induced mTBI, cross-validated with clinical and experimental data
  • A validated scaling ratio between injury risk curves in experimental animal models under blast and impact loading conditions

The U.S. participants in this project are the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) Blast Injury Research Program Coordinating Office, Biotechnology High Performance Computing Software Applications Institute, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).

United States (US)-India Collaboration on Injury Mechanisms in Blast and Blunt Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

The PCO continues joint sponsorship of the project, "Injury Mechanisms in Blast and Blunt TBI – A Comparative Study Based on Clinical Data and Numerical Analysis," with the Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM) International Technology Center- Pacific (ITC-PAC) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Global. The project explores the hypothesis that the mechanism of injury is different between blast and blunt neurotrauma, and is performed by a team of researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).

Department of Defense (DoD) Human Injury Modeling Working Group

The PCO established a DoD Human Injury Modeling Working Group to encourage collaboration and facilitate cooperative research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E;) programs across the DoD related to human injury models of Service Members. The working group coordinates and provides policy guidance for a framework that will result in a robust high performing model of the Service Member. The model, to be used by engineers, will accurately predict injuries and functional incapacitation across all military hazard stimuli. Additionally, the model will support the creation of protective systems and medical response planning. The working group comprises a diverse representation of researchers and scientists from across the DoD.

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Last modified: 13-Oct-2016