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Jun 28 2024

NCIA assists federated medical support


From 25 to 27 June 2024, the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) hosted the 11th meeting of the Federated Mission Networking (FMN) Inter Working Group (IWG) Medical Syndicate, at the NCIA campus in The Hague, Netherlands.


The FMN is a capability aiming to support command and control and decision-making in future operations through improved information-sharing and interoperability.

NCIA assists federated medical support

Every Nation has a different way to operate, from training, communications systems to medical support, and FMN provides a common framework for all NATO Allies and Partners to operate together in a mission, operation or exercise. FMN provides the agility, flexibility and scalability needed to satisfy emerging requirements of any mission environment and is the basis of NATO's Digital Transformation concept.

NCIA is involved in the full lifecycle of FMN. It participates directly in the development of the framework and the initiative. NCIA also supports this specific Medical Syndicate by providing technical expertise and architectural support for a federated medical support system.

"As an important military function, medical support also benefits from being federated. With FMN supporting the medical community, national forces would not need to deploy the same type of equipment and medical experts to the same location if another Nation has already deployed a medical unit," said Robert Bolluyt, Chairperson of the FMN IWG Medical Syndicate. "In order to make this work, medical information and data sharing needs to be standardized so that Nations can rely on other Nations for local and remote support, even if the procedures and requirements differ from theirs."

This standardization is developed by the IWG Medical Syndicate, a collaborative platform tasked by the Federated Mission Networking Operational Coordination and the Capability Planning Working Groups to develop these specifications for both operational and capability aspects for medical support in the context of FMN.

The focus of the 11th meeting of the FMN IWG Medical Syndicate was on the concept of federated telemedicine services. Telemedicine is the delivery and support of the practice of medicine over a distance using information and communication technologies. It encompasses capabilities from a simple phone conversation to remote robotic surgery. Telemedicine enables highly skilled medical professionals to remotely assess a situation during mission deployments and to communicate easily regardless of geographical location.

This application of FMN allows for medical support to be provided from anywhere in the Alliance, further ensuring the safety and security of NATO deployed personnel.