Over the decades, the WLIRC at the Ryder Trauma Center has developed a living laboratory to study and improve the delivery of trauma care by civilian and military clinicians. Our mission is to characterize challenges to the delivery of trauma care in the military and civilian environments.
The WLIRC has a long-standing relationship with the Department of Defense and the US Army. One of the programs is providing trauma training for all Forward Surgical Teams (FSTs) that get deployed. This training is unique because the complete care team, not just the physicians, come in for the training. These teams are paired up with UM clinical personnel and provide care to patients as they are admitted to the Ryder Trauma Center. The WLIRC is also working with the Defense Health Agency, to create a Combat Casualty Care learning curriculum and training platform called Deployed Medicine, that will be used to train all military personnel across all military Services. This curriculum includes learning objectives, how-to videos, skill instructions and training assets. It is available on the web and as a mobile application.
The WLIRC also provides telemedicine support US Facilities overseas. This includes real-time audio and video communication as well as access to special telemedicine robots that allow for remote visualization of operative procedures.
In addition to these programs, the WLIRC has a partnership with BMW of North America for more than 15 years. This includes conducting research and evaluation to identify mechanisms of injury for crash involved occupants with serious injury and conducting evaluations on the accuracy and efficacy of injury risk estimates. This research and evaluation is performed to monitor and improve BMW safety systems and promote innovations in automobile safety. This is a multi-disciplinary project with the medical team at UM, an engineering team at Impact Research, and BMW.
The center is named in honor of the late Congressman William Lehman (1919-2005), who championed the cause of injury prevention. He is also credited for the initial congressional mandate, issued in 1991, for the center to improve automobile safety through research and education.