Fort Defiance Industries continues its worldwide expansion with the signing of a distributor agreement with South Korean FINE CNS. The exclusive agreement covers the distribution of our Automated Field Steam Sterilizers and accessory products throughout South Korea and aims to provide U.S. Allies in the region with the latest medical technology for the field.

FINE CNS is a company that makes a cleaner and safer tomorrow through infection control and hygiene management in hospitals, pharmaceuticals, food and public places through the importation of world class sterilization and decontamination equipment. “This is the perfect partner for us in Korea,” said Sebastian Ward, vice president of sales and marketing at Fort Defiance Industries. “They have the experience, knowledge and the existing industry contacts to allow us to be professionally represented. We are very excited to enter the South Korean market with them.” Through the agreement, FDI’s products will be available to end-users in the military, as well as to aid organizations providing humanitarian medical aid to war and poverty stricken international regions and provides patients with hospital level sterilization in austere environments. “We are really excited to be a partner of FDI and promote their state-of-the-art Automated Field Steam Sterilizer. We are sure the system will benefit the South Korean Armed Forces and we are glad that it will complement our existing products to grow the business together as a partner.” said Joseph So, Managing Director of FINE CNS.

To learn more about FDI or its products in Korea please contact Joseph So at www.finecns.com or visit www.fortdefianceind.com.

Soldiers at Fort Carson, Colorado, made history this month by becoming the first active duty unit to set up and test the field hospital — Army Medicine’s modernized, modular update to the well-known Combat Support Hospital.

The group was assigned to the previously known 10th CSH, which became the Army’s first unit to convert to the field hospital design in June 2017. In a move to make battlefield care more expeditionary, the conversion reconfigured the 248-bed 10th CSH into a smaller, more modular 32-bed field hospital with the capability of three additional augmentation detachments including a 24-bed surgical detachment, a 32-bed medical detachment, and a 60-bed Intermediate Care Ward detachment.

The newly established 10th FH and the augmentation detachments now operate under the authority of the 627th Hospital Center. Together, they set up and tested the new field hospital design, gathering valuable lessons learned for the rest of the force.

“Readiness and modernization are two of the Army Chief of Staff’s top priorities, and our unit has the privilege of directly contributing to both,” said 627th Hospital Center Commander Col. Mark Stevens. “What we are doing here at Fort Carson will not only prepare our team for upcoming deployments but will also set the conditions for success across the Army by providing a tested and validated Role III capability for deployment anywhere in the world for the full spectrum of unified land operations.”

At Role III, the patient is treated in a medical treatment facility staffed and equipped to provide care to all categories of patients, including resuscitation, initial wound surgery, damage control surgery and postoperative treatment. Stevens said the exercise has provided the teams with the opportunity to assess individual Soldier readiness and resiliency, as well as medical maintenance readiness. The team executed multi-echelon training, explained Stevens, which means not only did the field hospital team get individual and collective training but also they used the event to concurrently train the new hospital center mission command staff on essential systems, processes and procedures.

“This is not your typical field training exercise,” said 10th Field Hospital Commander Lt. Col. Sabrina Thweatt. “During the first week, it took us longer than we anticipated to set up everything. When I circulated through, checking on Soldiers, I asked everyone how it was going and the answer I got was ‘slow.’ So I reminded the Soldiers that this is the first time we or anyone else has set up the field hospital, and that we were testing the design not only for our own unit but also for the entire Army. We must be deliberate and take our time to document deficiencies, lessons learned and best practices.”

During the field hospital exercise, members from U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency and the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Development Activity, both subordinate organizations of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, worked with unit Soldiers and leaders to answer questions and mitigate challenges.

“We want units to know that we are here to support them and make sure they are confident with the medical materiel USAMMA fields to them,” said Rufus Pruitt, USAMMA’s Western/Pacific Regional manager of the Force Sustainment Directorate.

Pruitt has become a familiar face to the 627th Hospital Center and field hospital teams, as he and USAMMA regional Medical Liaison Officer Mike Mc Hale took part in the unit conversion in June.

“Our goal with taking part in this first field hospital exercise was to see any issues first hand. On paper, the concept looks one way. But when you actually set up equipment, situations can occur that create challenges,” explained USAMMDA Product Manager Jaime Lee. “By seeing them in person, we can determine how to mitigate any challenges and improve the training plan or adjust the fielding plan.”

Additionally, Lee explained some immediate lessons learned with the newly fielded TEMPER Air Supported shelters. The shelters are expected to make the deployment of the new field hospital easier since they are 50 percent lighter and go up 50 percent faster than the older tents. However, Lee said Soldiers have noted that during the cleaning process, the bottoms of the shelter floors get scuffed and scratched when they are placed on a hard surface.

“It quickly became apparent that providing low-cost tarps to place beneath the tent floors would preserve the life of the TEMPER Air Supported shelters,” Lee said.

Lee also said the reconfiguration of water/waste water systems and power distribution has been challenging.

“We needed a tension knot for the thermal liners in order to hold power cables off the floor,” said Lee. “We trained the 10th FH Soldiers on this procedure and took some pictures for a ‘how to’ for other units.”

The field hospital exercise also highlighted new capabilities offered by the field hospital design, such as the option of microbiology on the battlefield — an important medical capability to diagnose potentially dangerous infectious diseases.

“If a patient has an infection in a field hospital, we need to make sure we can identify it,” explained Spc. Christopher Landers. “If we can diagnose the patient here before they get evacuated to a higher level of care, it will give the providers a better idea of what to expect and, ultimately, a better road to recovering for the patient.”

Over the next five years, the Army plans to convert the rest of the active duty CSHs, as well as Army Reserve hospitals that are part of the Medical Materiel Readiness Program and Army Prepositioned Stocks. Thweatt’s advice to other units as they go through the conversion from a CSH to a field hospital is to remain flexible and patient.

“Remember, a field hospital is not a CSH,” said Thweatt. “You have to get creative in making adjustments–but not at the expense of the design concept. As long as future units stay focused on improving the design in ways that benefit the Warfighter, rather than trying to make it ‘perfect’ or comparing it to the legacy CSH, all will be well. The preparation process is long and some days were frustrating. But now that we’re in the field and actually seeing all the plans come to fruition — watching the Soldiers take ownership with sweat dripping and still motivated — makes it all worth it.”

“This is the Army. This is what we do. To be a part of this is exciting,” added Thweatt. “My boots are dusty, and they haven’t been dusty in a while.”

By Ellen Crown, U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency Public Affairs

Article courtesy of U.S. Army

It was cause for celebration at FDI on May 23, 2018. The date marks the occasion of FDI shipping its 200^th P2131 Automated Field Steam Sterilizer to the U.S. Dept. of Defense. Since shipping its first system in 2015, FDI has worked hand-in-hand with the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force to deliver advanced steam sterilization technology to our fighting men and women in the field. “Not only does this system help our front line service member in the event of a causality, but it also supports worldwide aid and disaster relief operations in which the military finds itself”, says FDI’s President and CEO, Chris Yerger. In the coming years, FDI will continue its efforts to replace the entire inventory of M-138 “Big Bertha” autoclaves in the U.S. DoD inventory while also embarking on a campaign to introduce the system to foreign militaries around the world.

SOFEX presented FDI with a considerable opportunity to introduce the Middle Eastern markets to the P2131 Automated Field Steam Sterilizer. Official delegations and potential local partners alike enthusiastically embraced the P2131’s concept, one of offering hospital quality sterilization in the field environment and were impressed with both the flexibility of the system and its potential applications. Founded in 1996 by His Majesty King Abdullah II, The Special Operations Forces Exhibition and Conference continues to grow with each edition and is acquiring paramount ranking amongst specialized global defense exhibitions. SOFEX provides an ideal platform to present new and innovative equipment in order to deliver swift, decisive and effective solutions, that will help decision makers maintain the security and safety in their countries, regions and around the world. “Large multi-national corporations and small start ups a like were offered equal opportunity to demonstrate and present their products to an international audience of potential clients” said Sebastian Ward, FDI’s VP of Sales and Marketing. “It was great to see such an internationally diverse community of nations come together and exchange ideas regarding global security and defense, as well as foreign aid and relief”

For information on SOFEX’s sister show, IDEX 2019 in Abu Dhabi , please visit https://idexuae.ae/

TWINSBURG, Ohio —“This is a historical moment,” said Army Col. LaConnia Dandy, commander of the Army Reserve’s 256th Combat Support Hospital, “because CSHs don’t jump.”

Jumping, or moving a hospital on the battlefield to maintain proximity to advancing units, is a large logistical undertaking.

A CSH, pronounced “cash,” is so large that moving one after it’s been established requires several days of packing equipment and tearing down tents, and outside resources to physically pick up the equipment crammed into containers capable of holding more than 500 cubic feet of materiel, and flatbed trucks to haul the hospital to the new location.

“Historically, because CSHs are huge, we require lift support to move,” explained Dandy. “As a combat support hospital, we are not very agile and we can’t sustain ourselves without the assistance of other support companies.”

The 256th Combat Support Hospital has been identified as a Ready Force X unit, which are Army Reserve units expected to maintain a readiness posture that would allow it to deploy within days or weeks. The 256th CSH is postured to be the next hospital to be deployed.

“Based on the current threat, jumping the CSH is a necessary capability because the survivability of soldiers depends on it,” Dandy said.

Hospitals on the Battlefield

The goal of a CSH is to minimize the distance from the point of injury to the location of advanced treatment. They resemble civilian hospitals in that they have the capability to provide the most basic to the most advanced trauma care, from dental, to CT scans, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery, and head trauma care.

“Because our unit is an Army Reserve unit, we have an advantage [over] our active-duty counterparts,” Dandy said. “The majority of our soldiers work in the medical field as our daily jobs as civilians. This allows us to think outside the box, be innovative, and remain up-to-date with the most current and successful treatment plans.

Due to the Geneva Conventions, medical personnel can only carry a weapon for self-defense, so a CSH must also be wary of advances from the enemy, Dandy said. In a combat zone, if a hospital takes heavy artillery fire or is in danger of being overrun by the enemy, it must be capable of jumping to ensure its patients are kept safe. Evading the enemy is a secondary benefit to the 256th Combat Support Hospital exercising its capabilities to jump in a timely manner.

“We exercised our ability to jump in a training environment so we know, and have the confidence necessary, to jump in a real-world scenario,” said Dandy.

This month, the unit took advantage of Combat Support Training Exercise 18-03 to flex its jumping muscles.

“Now that we’ve set this model, it can become a norm and an expected course of action for all CSHs to be capable of performing,” Dandy said. “We will continue to grow in confidence and should we deploy, the 256th will be ready for anything — even a jump.”

Article Courtesy of The United States Department of Defense