An idea originated by students at John Hopkins University to create artificial intelligence-powered medics for work on the battlefield treating injured soldiers is moving to the next level after it was picked up by NATO.

They have been developing a Digital Triage Assistant (DTA) system and the device has now been tested by the Czech military during a training exercise in an unspecified part of the Czech Republic last Friday (13th August).

It is strapped to soldiers to gather data on injuries providing medics with live updates on their health status and injuries.

Eventually, that data will also go to an artificial intelligence unit which is part of the device that will analyse and advise medical teams on the ground and at hospitals.

The DTA system uses a series of body sensors to monitor a soldier’s vital signs gathering information that can then be used by medics on the battlefield to make more informed decisions about how to treat injuries, or later for the AI to actually offer advice on the best treatments through to even a prognosis on whether the soldier is likely to survive.

According to John Hopkins University, the AI feature will also take inputs like past medical history, and quickly outputs a quantitative measure of the severity of the soldier’s injury, known as the “mortality likelihood score.”

John Hopkins added that this will be particularly useful in mass-casualty events where split-second decisions can save lives. The device will help the medics make the correct choices in high-pressure environments such as on the battlefield.

Throughout the exercise, the soldiers wearing the DTA system were being monitored by medics from a safe distance.

The “injured” soldiers can be seen being removed from the battlefield by their companions and loaded into a military ambulance as they are monitored.

Kristina Soukupova, President, the DefSec Innovation Hub, said: “The system consists of sensors that we put on a soldier’s body that monitor his or her heartbeat, breathing rate, and so on and so forth.”

Kristina added that the device also: “shows where the soldier is and how heavily wounded he or she is.”

Major Bedrich Hyza, Chief of Training at the Brno Military Academy, said: “The system is very useful for the military because it provides information about the patient as soon as possible giving you a better chance of making good decisions about how to save their life.”

He added: “The life for the regular soldiers and also for the medics will be easier because the soldiers know that they will always be, let’s say, under the protection of the medical team.”