Preparation

1. AWARENESS

To make the public, clinicians, scientists and engineers aware of a new category of clinical problem arising out of the recent wars. The set of talks on Sunday will help to define a new constellation of injuries that we are seeing in the battlefield - Polytrauma.

2. IMPROVE CARE

To improve the care that polytrauma patients receive.  To achieve this we will need a research agenda and a strategic plan to address these injuries. These injuries are a clinical challenge to the health care provider to render the best treatment at the time of injury and during subsequent reconstructive process and rehabilitation.

The conference is organized to first provide an in depth presentation of the problem, its etiology and its mechanism. Second, provide a series of talks on technologies that can be applied to the solution. However the task for the participants is to come up with a research agenda and plan to implement a successful solution for the care of polytrauma, with the overall goal of enabling these severely injured soldiers to regain their independence.

Sunday Afternoon
  • Present and define the problem of Polytrauma
Sunday Night – Monday Afternoon
  • Present state of the art technologies and systems that can be used as part of the solution. These technologies fall into three broad categories - biology, robotics and simulation.
3. ENVISION A SUCCESSFUL POLYRAUMA RESEARCH PROGRAM

We would like each of the invited participants to begin thinking about and working on a research agenda that would allow us to improve the care for these patients. Following the initial series of talks on Sunday and Monday, the participants will be divided into three break out groups:

Group Tasks

  • Work on both short term (less than 5 years) and long term ( greater than 5 years) research agendas for the improvement of care for Polytrauma.
  • Seriously consider how your envisioned research program would provide both incremental improvements, and in some cases revolutionary improvements in treating these severe multi-system injuries.
  • Present your findings on Tuesday morning.
NOTE

Although the groups will first gather officially Monday afternoon and present their findings and research agendas Tuesday morning, we would like everyone to take some significant time over the next few days to begin this work.

To help in this process - re-read the assumptions that are provided in the brochure. They will help in understanding the unique challenge that is presented by polytrauma and its injuries to multiple systems - brain, vision, hearing, facial function and limbs.

CONTACT

If you have key articles that you would like to share please send them to me at Joseph.Rosen@dartmouth.edu and I will include them on the conference website.

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