There is a need in the modern military to optimize the time physicians spend interacting with patients. For example, a goal is for doctors to spend no more than 15 to 30 minutes with the patient during routine outpatient appointments. A great deal must be accomplished during this time, ranging from a review of the vital signs and assessment of the patient's conditions, through a diagnosis and ordering of prescriptions, laboratory tests, etc., to a possible referral or follow up, and discharge. During this process information must be received, reviewed and recorded by the physician.

There is a need to assist physicians in this process to better maintain the health of their patients. A significant advancement to achieving this need is a set of standardized medical guidelines across both the US military and civilian medical communities, and better training in the utilization of the guidelines. The training must be comprehensive ranging from diagnosis, through treatment, to the prevention of future medical conditions. The proposed program will accomplish this objective by combining recent advances in telemedicine with those of Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL).

To assist in meeting these goals, and in response to AFRL/HEA's SBIR solicitation, Ontar has designed and implemented GTP-ADL -- the Global Treatment Protocols via Advanced Distance Learning. The Phase I solicitation gave the program objectives as "Leveraging the advances made through the Telemedicine and Distance Learning Initiatives." This program will develop approved telemedicine treatment protocols. These protocols will allow health care professionals to respond and treat using a specific set of guidelines and procedures that would be administered consistently. Currently, assessment of need, diagnostics, degree of intervention, and treatment timing of patients are not conducted on a standardized basis across the US. This lack of protocol becomes more convoluted across international boundaries and linguistic differences. Subsequent to identifying the protocol structure, a training program will be designed and embedded in an intelligent tutoring system, so medical personnel can receive one-on-one mentoring without the need for an instructor. The training system will be available over the internet so it can be accessed by military medical personnel worldwide, and via a palmtop computer so that it can be used in the field as an operational aid.

The Ontar Phase I program met and exceeded these objectives. GTP-ADL uses a unique approach to expand training and distance learning capabilities, introduce new scenarios of distance learning, and implement computerized medical guidelines to increase flexibility. It demonstrates how to simulate electronic medical records to retrieve global treatment protocols interactively for medical training, and how to use ComPResS to practice medical guidelines. It also demonstrates anywhere accessibility on conventional platforms, such as desktop computers, notebook computers, tablet computers and wireless Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) systems.

Supports Multiple Platforms!!




THREE LEVELS OF TRAINING:


Class Room Training



Clinical Case Study



Guidelines Practices