ADAPTING EXPERIMENTATION AND TESTING
EXPERIMENTATION PERSISTENT
The Experimentation Integration Cell ensures that the right medical technology is at the right event at the right point in the acquisition process.
by Paul Lagasse T
he mission of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) is to create, develop, acquire and deliver medical capabilities to the warfighter. A critical part of ensuring mission
success involves testing those capabilities in real-world condi- tions. Troughout the year, USAMRDC’s nine direct reporting units (DRUs) regularly participate in Army, joint service and multinational training exercises. Tey provide scientists and warfighters alike with hands-on opportunities to stress-test new capabilities and their protocols in a wide range of real-world conditions to ensure they are reliable and address gaps in provid- ing far-forward care and returning warfighters to duty.
Two years ago, USAMRDC wanted to field multiple teams from across its DRUs to participate in Project Convergence (PC), a joint, multiyear and multinational experiment in the effective integration of modernization capabilities that is organized by the U.S. Army Futures Command (AFC), USAMRDC’s parent organization. But having each DRU coordinate individually with the experiment’s sponsor would risk confusion, inconsistency and redundancy for the DRUs and could also significantly increase the logistical, resourcing and administrative burden on the sponsors. So, Maj. Gen. Anthony L. McQueen, USAMRDC’s then-commanding general, charged the Office of the Principal
Assistant for Acquisition—the organization responsible for field- ing new and improved medical capabilities to end users after thorough testing and evaluation for use in austere combat envi- ronments—with creating an Experimentation Integration (EI) Cell to serve as a central coordination point for the command’s participation in persistent experimentation events.
Te EI Cell has demonstrated success in reducing points of contact, streamlining the coordination process, integrating capabilities and improving the consistency and quality of infor- mation dissemination at PC 2022. As a result, it has become USAMRDC’s standard method for participating in readiness and interoperability exercises as a way to provide real-time test- ing of new medical technologies for the warfighter.
CELL STRUCTURE “AFC has a directive for persistent experimentation,” said Col. John T. Nuckols, acting principal assistant for acquisition and the officer instructed by McQueen to stand up the EI Cell. “If you’re going to accomplish that, you have to create the environments and the relationships to conduct experimentation without inter- rupting training. Experimentation in training scenarios helps us not only gain perspectives on the limitations of our capabil- ities, but also to see how warfighters use the capabilities, often
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