The device “Ahead® 100” developed for the military by BrainScope www.brainscope.com of Bethesda Maryland, is just one of the technologies that the Combat Casualty Care Research program funded by the Defense Health Agency www.health.mil/dha and the Army, will use to help medics and providers have access to more tools to more easily recognize TBIs.
The BrainScope device is able to assess closed head injuries quickly with a mobile brain scan instrument using a headset and a hand-held, battery-operated device. Recently approved by FDA, the device is a promising tool to use in war zones where large equipment many not be available to identify TBI. Early identification of mild TBIs allows for more immediate and appropriate care.
In another project, a public-private partnership in TBI research has been initiated called the TBI End-Points Development (TED) Study involving Dr. Geoffrey Manley, Chief of Neurosurgery at San Francisco General Hospital and Dr. Tammy Crowder, Manage of the Combat Casualty Care’s neurotrauma program.
The five year study awarded by DOD will look at data from tens of thousands of TBI patients to identify ways to measure brain injury and recovery using biomarkers from blood along with new imaging equipment, software, and other tools. Long term data will be collected from existing studies and databases and then integrated into a Meta dataset.
In another project, the Durable Portable NeuroBehavioral Assessment (DANA), is a mobile software application to help medics make rapid and reliable assessments of cognitive and psychological dysfunction following brain injury. The software can run on many light weight mobile devices and was developed by Anthrotronix www.anthrotronix.com for DOD.
In another move to help obtain the data needed to assess TBIs using a national surveillance system, Representatives Bill Pascrell, Jr (D-NJ) http://pascrell.house.gov and Thomas J. Rooney (R-FL) http://rooney.house.gov on March 18, 2015 introduced legislation related to TBI.
The “National Traumatic Brain Injury Research and Treatment Improvement Act of 2015” www.congress.gov would direct CDC to establish a national surveillance system to track the occurrence of TBI and collect data to assist research, prevention, and treatment efforts.
In order to carry out the development of a national surveillance system, expertise would be needed from state public health agencies, health information technology experts, other information management specialists, medical facilities at the VA www.va.gov, and from behavioral health centers.
The legislation would provide grants, contracts or cooperative agreements with both public and/or private nonprofit entities. Also, information and data obtained from the surveillance system would be made available to other agencies such as NIH, HRSA, FDA, CMS, AHRQ, Department of Education, VA, and DOD.