DVIDS – News – Symposium on Artificial Intelligence gives MEDLOG experts a platform to improve sustainability

CAMP CARROLL, Republic of Korea — In today’s digital age, the US military continues to think about ways in which artificial intelligence, or AI, can expand and improve current operations for sustainable enterprises, including medical logistics.

Lieutenant Colonel Marcus D. Perkins, immediate former commander of the US Army Medical Materiel Center Korea, participated as a panelist and medical logistics expert at the virtual 2022 DOD Digital and AI Symposium in June.

USAMMC-K is a direct reporting unit of the US Army Medical Logistics Command. AMLC is the Army’s primary medical logistics organization and serves as the Class VIII Life Cycle Management Command. It provides the force with medical readiness and performs medical equipment management functions for combatant commands to establish and maintain operational medical capabilities.

Perkins, who focused on AI technologies that help manage resources to address vulnerabilities across the global supply chain, was one of several panelists and speakers who attended the two-day event, which was attended by approximately 1,400 people.

“It was an amazing and rewarding experience for me,” he said. “I believe I brought command experience as an end user who was trapped in the position of managing critical medical equipment during a global pandemic and during supply chain shortages.”

maj. Y. Brian Lee, with the office of the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office of the Secretary of Defense, or CDAO, who hosted the event, led the Advanced Analytics in the Supply Chain panel discussion.

“The symposium was a great platform to introduce the CDAO to the world, with key DOD leaders, such as Dr. Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, providing insight into the roles and responsibilities of the CDAO,” Lee said. “The CDAO will bring a new business model for digital transformation, data analytics and artificial intelligence.”

For his part, Perkins said he provided a first-hand account of the experiences with medical equipment challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic response in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the lessons discussed and a better way forward in the future.

“In addition, we mapped the entire supply chain from factory to foxhole to look for areas for improvement,” he added.

One of the biggest challenges, Perkins said, remains a lack of communication between supply chain information systems. Current systems ‘talk past each other’ instead of communicating seamlessly with each other, creating a ‘readiness gap’.

“I believe the industry can leverage this technology at the manufacturing base and executive agency level to see both predictable and unpredictable influencers (in the supply chain),” he said. “It’s important to remember that DOD is a very small part of the global/US medical supply chain, so we need to get ahead of the rest of the groups to see and predict these shortcomings. If we don’t, it will cost us lives. We cannot remain reactive.”

More about the symposium, CDAO and the military’s work towards AI and digital solutions can be found here: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3058028/digital-transformation -ai-important-in-keeping-battlefield-edge-leaders-say/