FORT DETRICK, Md. — A prototype handheld device that will allow service members to rapidly identify infectious diseases and biological warfare agents in the field has earned a team of scientists from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command’s Institute of Infectious Diseases a prestigious award from Army Futures Command.
RIID Diagnostic Systems Division Chief Lt. Col. Brandon Pybus, Division of Molecular Biology Chief Lt. Col. Charles DiTusa, Chief Science Officer Dr. Robert von Tersch and Operational Diagnostics Branch Chief Dr. Jeffrey Koehler received the 2022 Maj. Gen. Harold J. “Harry” Greene Innovation Award in the Acquisition Writing in the Warfighter Team category. The award recognized RIID’s summary of its development and demonstration of the Diagnostic Readiness Global Operational Network and Mobile Embedded Diagnostic Capability, or DRAGON MEDIC, a field-portable rapid diagnostic tool for identifying biological threats more quickly and efficiently than current methods.
Maj. Gen. Edmond M. Brown, chief of staff of Army Futures Command, and Army Science Board member Dr. Susan Myers, the widow of Maj. Gen. Greene, presented the award during a ceremony at the Army Software Factory in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 1, 2024. The awards, which recognize critical writing focused on Army acquisition challenges and successful efforts to overcome them, are named in honor of Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2014 while serving as the deputy commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan.
DRAGON MEDIC uses commercial off-the-shelf hardware to test the genetic “fingerprints” of suspected pathogens in real-time at the point of exposure, enabling medics to respond immediately to biological threats rather than having to wait for test results to come back from a lab far behind the lines or even in the United States. But the real innovation behind DRAGON MEDIC is not the devices themselves; it is RIID’s approach to getting them into the hands of people who can use them in the field in order to iterate and stress-test procedures that will enable more agile responses to novel and emerging infectious disease threats.
“Under our current acquisition system, by the time a piece of equipment is fielded and part of a program of record, it’s almost obsolete in the biotech space,” explains Pybus. “So instead, we are taking devices that are used every day in labs here in the United States and providing them to field-forward units so they can ‘kick the tires,’ take them on exercises, even deploy with them if necessary. That way, we get feedback on how well our applications are working, and they get an additional capability that helps drive down risk.”
The DRAGON MEDIC team describes this parallel development approach as a “push-pull” partnership between the brick-and-mortar laboratories equipped with extensive arrays of robust, sophisticated stationary testing equipment, and the field laboratories that rely on portability and flexibility to operate at the tip of the spear.
To test this concept, the DRAGON MEDIC team is inaugurating a pilot program with the 1st Area Medical Laboratory, the Army’s sole deployable medical and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives, or CBRNE, laboratory, based at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. A team of three or four RIID scientists will embed with the 1st AML for two exercises, one local and one in an austere environment.
During the exercises, the RIID personnel will demonstrate how to use cutting-edge polymerase chain reaction and genomic sequencing devices to detect a variety of infectious diseases and biological warfare agents that service members are likely to encounter in the field. Once the tests are finished, the equipment will be left with 1st AML to allow them to continue its evaluation and to develop a set of standard operating procedures that can be adopted by other field labs — and perhaps eventually by the broader force.
“Ideally, I would like to see if we can move this capability beyond the field lab and into the hands of Soldiers,” says von Tersch. “If we can field something that helps a sergeant or a young Soldier get a very quick understanding of what might be in the environment around them, then all the better.”
DiTusa explains that because the search for faster, simpler and cheaper ways to sequence pathogens is being driven by the commercial sector rather than by the military, the DRAGON MEDIC project does not fall under an existing program of record, which is how the military traditionally allocates staff and funding to support the research, development, testing, evaluation and eventually acquisition of new devices and products.
“This isn’t a new technology development effort, it’s our concept of use that is being tested,” says DiTusa. “The widgets have been developed; it is the way that we’re using them, that's novel. Because of that, our capability set falls somewhere between the medical sphere and the CBRNE sphere, and outside of existing programs of record. What we are looking for, ultimately, is a new type of program of record that would support prototype acquisition and sustainment through these push-pull relationships.”
The DRAGON MEDIC team sees winning the Maj. Gen. Greene Innovation Award as a recognition of the value of their novel approach to rapidly fielding a vitally needed capability, as well as of the team’s hard work getting the project to the point where it is ready to hand off to the 1st AML.
“I have been working on the underlying technology for this pilot for all 10 years that I have been here,” says Developmental Diagnostics Branch Chief Dr. Christopher Stefan. “In those 10 years, technology has progressed exponentially. What used to take two days now takes two hours. To be able to not only conceptualize something but then to turn it into a product and deliver it to the people who can use it for the intended purpose is very rewarding.”
“It’s nice to see the things we’ve made getting out to play more of a functional and operational role,” agrees Koehler. “It’s good the work that we’ve done on this project come to fruition. It’s going to make a real difference.”
Social Sharing