Skull Fracture Blast Injury Prevention Standards Request for Information (RFI) for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), Blast Injury Research Coordinating Office (BIRCO)

As part of the DOD EA, the Blast Injury Research Coordinating Office (BIRCO) is responsible for identifying the best available blast injury prevention standards that will meet the needs/requirements of the DoD. Our office has executed the Military Health System (MHS) Blast Injury Prevention Standards Recommendation (BIPSR) Process. This BIPSR Process is designed to address the needs of all Services for biomedically valid Blast Injury Prevention Standards to protect against the entire spectrum of blast injuries.

A “Military Health System Blast Injury Prevention Standard” is defined as a “biomedically valid description of physiologically or biomechanically based injury and performance responses of a human to blast insults.” These standards can range from simple dose response curves and injury thresholds that address single components of blast insults, such as blast pressure wave magnitude, or address multiple components of blast insults, such as pressure magnitude over time.

These standards will play a critical role in the prevention of Warfighter injuries and the enhancement of Warfighter survivability by informing health hazard assessments, survivability assessments, and protection system development aimed at producing safe weapon systems, survivable combat platforms, and effective protection systems. BIRCO is gathering information related to Skull Fracture in the process of identifying candidate standards for adoption within the DoD. Please see the attached Request for Information (RFI) for specific details.