Medical Emergency Disaster Response Network (MEDRN)

Customer:  National Institute of Health (NIH)

User: First Responders

Description:

The Medical Emergency Disaster Response Network (MEDRN) is a project funded through the SBIR program by the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. MEDRN is the first disaster information semantic wiki to facilitate the access, dissemination and sharing of information across all parties involved in emergency management. MEDRN provides a mechanism for field intelligence professionals and disaster information management personnel to rapidly integrate information from a myriad of tactical data sources into cohesive, connected intelligence. Because MEDRN helps users link information semantically, it provides an intelligence collection and analysis tool for more effectively preparing, monitoring and responding to disaster events. With the capability to produce geo-spatial overlays and map time information, MEDRN presents  a comprehensive view of the relevant dynamic information needed to facilitate decision making during a critical event.

The MEDRN project was selected by the National Library of Medicine to be presented to the Board of Regents in June 2008 for its successful transition from research to pilot project with users at the Maryland Joint Operations Center (MJOC), its strategic interest to the Library’s Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC) and for the co-funding it attracted from DARPA.  MEDRN achieved Phase III commercialization status based on a US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) contract to extend the results of MEDRN.