Cobra Gold: medical information operations

Presents a brief description of the medical information operations that were conducted during an annual military exercise (Cobra Gold, 1998) taking place in Thailand. The topics of discussion are organized as they happened: pre-deployment activities, actual deployment operations and post-deployment activities. Above all, exercises and operations are based on written requirements. With guidance from CINCPAC (Commander-in-Chief, Pacific), the pre-deployment activities began when it was identified that medical surveillance, command and control, and in-transit visibility were needed and desired. In conjunction with that, we had to identify what was necessary in the form of hardware, software, support and personnel. The Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) was the executive agent responsible for the overall planning of the exercise, and they did not have extra resources to offer to support these additional capabilities. The software needed additional coding, funding needed to be identified, and personnel needed to be identified and trained