This session explores what military medicine will need to sustain injured servicemembers in contested environments where evacuation may be delayed and small medical teams must manage critically ill patients for longer periods. Drawing on lessons from rural civilian healthcare, we’ll look at practical innovations that could strengthen forward deployed care such as rugged and easy-to-use medical devices, real-time remote specialist support, and AI-assisted tools that help medics prioritize patients during high-casualty events. Rather than pitching a single solution, the session focuses on how commercial technologies already solving real problems in resource limited civilian environments can guide the next generation of military medical capabilities. Attendees will gain a clearer picture of what frontline teams will face—and how smart, deployable technology can help keep servicemembers alive until they reach higher levels of care. 1. Equipment that can go farther forward and still perform If medical personnel are going to manage critical patients near the point of injury, their equipment must be simpler, tougher, and far easier to maintain than traditional hospital-grade devices. Federal and state emergency preparedness agencies and rural health care systems are already adopting technologies built around those principles: rugged designs, intuitive interfaces, minimal maintenance, and power systems that don’t rely on ideal conditions. These real-world examples show how medical devices can be adapted to function reliably well beyond conventional care settings, something the military will need as it prepares for a more contested battlefield. 2. Remote specialist reach for complex patients at lower echelons of care Today’s military has largely functioned in settings where critically ill and injured patients could be rapidly evacuated to higher echelons of care. In the conflicts of the future, life-saving specialist care will not be available to casualties for extended periods of time. Civilian rural hospitals have faced similar challenges in getting the right kind of care to patients who need it. Their solution, real-time remote patient monitoring, lets specialists support complex patients from miles away by viewing ventilator data, waveforms, and alerts in real time. This model offers a clear path for the military: a way to bring high-level clinical expertise to medics closer to the point of injury without waiting for evacuation, enabling more stable patients and better outcomes. 3. Decision-support tools to help overworked medics keep pace Future battlefields will create large numbers of casualties, requiring constant high stakes decision making from medical personnel in the field. Civilian care settings facing staffing shortages have turned to AI-assisted scoring systems and early-warning tools to help clinicians identify deterioration and focus their attention where it matters most. These same concepts, smarter alerts, prioritized triage, and reduced cognitive load, can directly support medical teams dealing with large casualty numbers in rapidly changing environments Rather than focusing on one specific device or system, this session highlights transferable ideas from the civilian sector that can help guide military medical modernization. By combining rugged simplicity, remote specialist support, and intelligent decision tools, MedTech developers can help the Military Health System prepare for the realities of future conflict—keeping injured servicemembers alive until they can safely reach higher levels of care.