AI Decision Support System Aims to Improve Battlefield Triage

Hemorrhage is the leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield. More than 90% of service members who die from uncontrolled bleeding do so before reaching a medical facility.

At GovCIO Media & Research’s Defense IT Summit, Jacques Reifman explained how APPRAISE, an AI-enabled decision support system, helps combat medics triage casualties near the point of injury and assess hemorrhage risk. By analyzing patterns in vital signs, including heart rate and blood pressure, APPRAISE can estimate the likelihood of hemorrhage, helping medics prioritize treatment and evacuation decisions in real time.

Reifman said training large AI models for military medicine can be challenging because available medical datasets are often small and limited to controlled laboratory studies. To overcome that constraint, researchers use mathematical models to generate synthetic data, creating simulated patients that allow AI systems to train on much larger datasets.