BPM To Streamline Soldier RehabilitationBPM To Streamline Soldier Rehabilitation

Two companies have teamed up to develop a specialized business process management application to streamline the delivery of rehabilitative care for U.S. soldiers injured in the line duty.

Developed by federal systems integrator CollabraLink Technologies with BPM vendor Appian, Wounded Warrior is meant to make the process for registering, diagnosing, and rehabilitating injured soldiers at military Warrior Transition Units more efficient, according to the companies.

The Army created WTUs in 2007 in the wake of a scandal involving neglect of injured soldiers undergoing rehabilitation at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other veterans' hospitals. Soldiers there were found to be neglected and living in squalid conditions, prompting a federal investigation and improvements to the soldier-rehab system.

WTUs provide support to wounded soldiers according to what the Army calls a "triad of care," in which soldiers are assigned a squad leader, a nurse case manager, and a primary care physician to oversee their rehab so patients' needs are adequately met.

The basis for Wounded Warrior is the Appian BPM suite, a Web-based system rooted in a service-oriented architecture that provides a centralized management interface.

The application automates the process for managing the care of a soldier at a WTU from assessment to administration of his or her rehabilitation plan.

Wounded Warrior first provides a health assessment of a patient by asking a series of questions to help physicians identify specific rehabilitation needs, according to the companies.

The primary care physician for a particular patient then uses the system to verify and approve the Wounded Warrior assessment, after which it's automatically routed to a case manager or occupational therapist in charge of seeing the rehabilitation carried out.

The companies are piloting Wounded Warrior at seven WTUs and expect to roll it out to 38 more units once the pilot is complete, which is expected to happen by the fourth quarter of the year, according to Appian.