US Army conducts ground-breaking research in the Campbell Gross Anatomy Lab Can a commercial technology create a capability for a downrange, non-surgical provider to give surgical care for a discrete number of predetermined tasks for fellow soldiers to save lives and limbs?
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he Vyas Anatomy Lab is serving as the host facility for a research project with partnerships between Womack Army Community Hospital’s Col. (Dr.) Tyler Harris, the principal investigator and orthopedic hand surgeon, the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, and Bio Mojo, a woman-owned small business based in Research Triangle Park. Bio Mojo focuses on XR, extended reality, related technologies and has been working with the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg since 2017 on the idea that you could use commercial technology to create a capability for downrange non-surgical providers to provide surgical care for a discrete number of predetermined tasks for fellow soldiers. Phase 2 of the project led by Col. Dr. Harris is being tested at Campbell. “This specific project is an outgrowth of the initial work we started in 2017. It went from, ‘is this even possible?’ To, ‘how does this become something that is rolled into training?” said Jerry Heneghan, chief design officer for Bio Mojo. “Under the leadership of Lt. Col. (Ret.) Steve Delellis at the Fort Bragg Research Institute, the Army came up with
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a dozen tasks deemed that a physician assistant, a nonsurgical physician, or a special forces medic, ought to be able to do to save a life downrange. Bio Mojo got involved to provide augmented reality heads-up display so that a remote expert, a surgeon, could draw on the heads-up display to identify physiological anatomical landmarks and provide visual guidance via HoloLens – kind of like John Madden on the screen when you are watching a football game.” Doctor Boyer, a renowned trauma surgeon at the Uniformed Services Medical School, created and teaches a course accredited by the American College of Surgeons for such downrange interventions and it has been used at Fort Bragg. The study at Campbell is evaluating the use of a pictorial flipbook of procedures versus the heads-up display specifically to treat compartment syndrome by dissecting apart and releasing fascia. One such procedure - a twoincision, four-compartment fasciotomy of the lower leg - is an effort to save the life and limb who has sustained significant trauma to the lower leg. The procedure releases pressure from internal bleeding inside the fascia saving muscle tissue and preventing toxins that develop
