Auditory Blast Injury Prevention Standards Request for Information. Submit responses via the DoD Blast Injury Research Program website, included below.
Auditory Blast Injury Prevention Standards Request for Information
This Request for Information (RFI) is for information and planning purposes only and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), headquartered at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The USAMRMC mission is to provide medical knowledge and materiel lifecycle management to protect, treat, and optimize Warfighter health and performance across the full spectrum of operations. The Department of Defense (DoD) Blast Injury Research Program Coordinating Office (PCO) manages the DoD blast injury research investment, on behalf of the Executive Agent (EA), to ensure critical knowledge gaps are filled, avoid costly and unnecessary duplication of effort, and accelerate the fielding of prevention and treatment strategies by leveraging existing knowledge and fostering collaboration and information sharing among the world's blast injury experts. The PCO advises the EA on Military Health System (MHS) Blast Injury Prevention and Treatment Standards to recommend to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs [OASD(HA)]. To identify the best available standards that will meet the needs of the DoD, the PCO, in collaboration The MITRE Corporation, employs the MHS Blast Injury Prevention Standards Recommendation (BIPSR) Process. The 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. The process provides an unbiased, stakeholder-driven critical assessment methodology for identifying the best biomedically valid candidate MHS Blast Injury Prevention Standards currently available. It supports the development and testing of safe weapons and effective combat platform crew and individual protection systems. It is important to note that the BIPSR Process is not a research program and does not develop new injury criteria or injury prediction tools. However, it does inform research by identifying gaps where no suitable standards currently exist.
The term “Military Health System (MHS) 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.” The 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. To conduct these assessments, the DoD needs MHS Blast Injury Prevention Standards to investigate the physiological and biomechanical effects of blast injuries on the Warfighter, both when generated by enemy weapons systems and during weapon systems firing.
For the purposes of this RFI, Blast Injury is defined as an injury that occurs as the result of detonation of high explosives, impulse exposure including small and large caliber arms fire, vehicle-borne and or person- borne weapon systems, rocket-propelled grenades, and improvised explosive devices. The taxonomy of injuries from blast explosive devices is: (a) Primary: Blast overpressure injury resulting in direct tissue damage from the shock wave coupling into the body; (b) Secondary: Injury produced by primary fragments originating from the exploding device (preformed and natural (unformed) casing fragments, and other projectiles deliberately introduced into the device to enhance the fragment threat); and secondary fragments, which are projectiles from the environment (debris, vehicular metal, etc.); (c) Tertiary: Displacement of the body or part of the body by the blast overpressure causing acceleration/deceleration to the body or its parts, which may subsequently strike hard objects and suffer typical blunt injury (translational injury), avulsion (separation) of limbs, stripping of soft tissues, skin speckling with explosive product residue, and building structural collapse that results in crush and blunt injuries or crush syndrome development; (d) Quaternary: Other ‘explosive products‘ effects - heat (radiant and convective) and toxic (toxidromes from fuel, metals, etc.) - causing burn and inhalation injury; (e) Quinary: Clinical consequences of ‘ post-detonation environmental contaminants ‘including bacteria (deliberate and commensal, with or without sepsis), radiation (dirty bombs), tissue reactions to fuel, metals, etc. Stakeholders have identified 14 blast injury types: Lower Extremity, Spine/Back, Upper Extremity, Dermal Burns, Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Pelvic/Urogenital, Neck, Face, Abdomen, Thorax, Skull Fracture, Ocular, Auditory, and Mild TBI.
The BIPSR Process currently focuses on Human Auditory Blast Injury Prevention Standards. Impulse noise related auditory injury includes symptoms such as tinnitus and hearing threshold shift, and physical changes to ear structure or performance, such as tympanic membrane rupture, disruption of the bones of the middle ear, and reduced auditory evoked potentials. Potential operational environments and intended uses of human Auditory Blast Injury Prevention Standards may include the protection of military service members who are exposed to various levels of impulsive noise from weapons fire or explosives, continuous noise from vehicle operation, and the combination of continuous and impulsive noise exposure. The BIPSR Process identified a need to define injury criteria and test methods to establish thresholds for protective systems designed to protect the hearing of military service members from all blast injury categories and types in their respective operational environments. This RFI seeks to:
1. Obtain information on existing Auditory Blast Injury criteria, thresholds, standards, and models, etc., that could be considered as potential DoD standards, as well as those being developed or researched.
2. Identify gaps between existing knowledge and that needed to inform standards.
3. Give performers/producers of existing protection systems that are highly relevant to understanding human tolerance limits and predicting injuries sustained by blast victims an opportunity to describe how they can assist in standards identification, development, and research.
4. Identify researchers who have developed, or are developing or researching, blast injury criteria, thresholds, and testing methods, and that possess appropriate scientific expertise, experience, and resources to describe and provide the scientific evidence needed to inform the standards.
5. Identify and obtain methodologies, tools, models and simulations, dose- response curves, injury thresholds, computational models, their components and parameters, and associated technologies that may contribute to an upgradable platform for continuous integration of improved technologies.
6. Obtain information from a broad community, including industry, academia, and other federal agencies on the availability of military-relevant blast injury standards.
7. Obtain information about the most commonly used or deployed weapon systems for development of operational scenarios and test conditions for candidate standards.
To submit copies of publications, articles, reports, images, etc., related to existing or emerging Human Auditory Blast Injury criteria, thresholds, and models, etc., for consideration as potential DoD Military Health System Blast Injury Protection Standards, please visit the DoD Blast Injury Research Program website at https://blastinjuryresearch.amedd.army.mil/guides/rfi.cfm. You will be asked to provide basic contact information and will then be provided a user name, password, and a link to the RFI submission site. After submitting your document(s), you will receive confirmation that your document was successfully submitted.
DISCLAIMERS AND IMPORTANT NOTES
This RFI is issued solely for information and program planning purposes; it does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Submission is voluntary and is not required to respond to a subsequent Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) (if any) or other research solicitation (if any) on this topic.
The USAMRMC/U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA)/DoD Blast Injury Research PCO will not provide reimbursement for costs incurred in responding to this RFI. Respondents are advised that USAMRAA/USAMRMC/DoD Blast Injury Research PCO are under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted under this RFI. Information in responses will be held confidential to the extent permitted under applicable laws and regulations. Any proprietary, non-public information should be marked so.
Questions should be addressed to the Contract Specialist for this RFI, Mr. Jeremy McMurry, via e-mail at jeremy.L.mcmurry.civ@mail.mil.
The website for the Blast Injury Research PCO can be accessed at https://blastinjuryresearch.amedd.army.mil/guides/rfi.cfm
Jeremy L. McMurry, Email jeremy.l.mcmurry.civ@mail.mil
