Proof Points

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research – TechWerks has a prime contract with Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), in support of its biomedical research mission, has a requirement to support the Center for Military Psychiatry and Neurosciences (CMPN) mission to conduct basic and applied research to develop evidence-based strategies to diagnose, prevent, and mitigate the effects of psychological demands, continuous operations, and brain trauma on the health and well-being of Service Members. We provide scientific and technical development support, program management and operational support, laboratory management support, clinical research coordination support, protocol review support, physiological support, psychological support, veterinarian and animal care support, statistical support, Polysomnographic support, clinical monitoring support and administrative support to the Center’s mission at the WRAIR as well as detachments.

Army Research Facilitation Laboratory (RFL) – Our team helped to design various operational features of the Person-Event Data Environment (PDE), a virtual business intelligence platform that provides secure access to de-identified soldier manpower, medical, and training data. We assisted with developing the governance protocols that complies with various HIPAA directives and DoD regulatory guidelines for handling PII/PHI in the form of limited data sets. We work closely with the Defense Health Agency (DoD) and Patient Administration Systems and Biostatistics Activity (Army) to establish secure lines for transfer of limited data sets (containing PII/PHI). Toward this end, we worked closely with various DoD and Army entities to develop streamlined compliance procedures involving Data Sharing Agreement Applications and Data Use Agreements; required for transfer of sensitive but unclassified medical data into the PDE. We have published several peer review scientific papers that address the use of Big Data analytics to examine pressing social and health questions that affect the Army. This work included developing a “report card” that examines Army soldier cardiovascular health compared with the health of a nationally representative civilian population. Current projects also include examining the psychometric properties (validity and reliability) of the Global Assessment Tool (GAT), a self-awareness instrument taken annually by all soldiers, predicting onset to PTSD from pessimistic thinking, and validating subtypes of physical and dietary health and relations to resilience.

• Designed instruments to securely capture data in a controlled web-based platform infra-structure, structure the information i to reliable and valid output, and evaluate the output with our customers.
• Analyzed big data assets from across the Department of Defense in order to provide comprehensive, longitudinal analyses of medical and behavioral health.
• Provided longitudinal and effects-based metrics to Army senior leaders on issues ranging from personnel and manpower issues, psychometric development, testing, and fielding, to behavioral health analyses and program evaluations.
• Managed highly sensitive cases/situations involving extremely sensitive information including data associated with family violence, misconduct, suicide, substance abuse, protected health information and other privacy related information.
• Aided in the development of an environment which allows for the safe handling of sensitive unclassified data without risk to Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Personal Health Information (PHI) significantly decreasing the amount of time needed to acquire data and saving the client significant time and money.