SANTA ANA, California (June 22, 2021)

Nihon Kohden OrangeMed, Inc. announced it was selected by U.S. Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command to develop ventilator remote control technology for the National Emergency Tele-Critical Care Network (NETCCN). The agreement was issued by the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC).

Nihon Kohden will develop such technology leveraging its Protective Control® feature of the NKV-550 ventilator platform. Protective Control is a second graphical user interface outside of the patient room, enabling clinicians to control and monitor the ventilator.

“We are excited to use our technical expertise to support our society in the fight against COVID-19 and other pandemics or natural disasters”, said Hong-Lin Du, MD, CEO of Nihon Kohden OrangeMed. “Protective Control has been widely adopted by hospitals globally during COVID-19 pandemic and is a perfect foundation for us to develop a ventilator remote control technology compatible with the NETCCN.”

The views expressed in this news release/article are those of the authors and may not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

About USAMRDC
The U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command is the Army’s medical materiel developer, with responsibility for medical research, development, and acquisition. USAMRDC produces medical solutions for the battlefield with a focus on various areas of biomedical research, including military infectious diseases, combat casualty care, military operational medicine, medical chemical and biological defense, and clinical and rehabilitative medicine. https://mrdc.amedd.army.mil/

About TATRC
The Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) is a Provisional Command under the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), located at Fort Detrick, Maryland. TATRC conducts and supports research through its four key divisions which include: Computational Biology, Digital Health, Medical Modeling & Simulation, and Medical Robotics and Autonomous Systems. TATRC fosters research to address gaps in DoD medical programs and military healthcare. With an extensive network of partners, TATRC expertise is focused on the entire research spectrum, from early stage innovative research to technology demonstrations and implementation to benefit the Warfighter.

About NETCCN
The U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command’s (USAMRDC) Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) launched NETCCN to address a key challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic: Extending critical care expertise to places that lack ICUs and associated clinical staff. Based on cellular communication networks, mobile technologies and cloud computing, NETCCN teams consist of critical care clinicians and technology partners who are collaboratively developing cloud-based, low-resource, stand-alone health information management systems for the creation and coordination of flexible and extendable “virtual critical care wards.” These rapidly available, high acuity virtual wards bring high-quality critical care capability to nearly every bedside, be it healthcare facilities, field hospitals, or other locations that lack adequate critical care expertise and resources. To date, NETCCN teams have delivered tele-critical care to COVID-19 patients in hospitals and at home in assistance of healthcare organizations in Iowa, Guam, Minnesota, North Dakota, Puerto Rico and South Dakota.

About MTEC
MTEC is a biomedical technology consortium collaborating with multiple government agencies under a 10-year renewable Other Transactional Agreement with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. MTEC is managed by Advanced Technology International. To find out more about MTEC, visit mtec-sc.org.