DECEMBER 30, 2021 – Medical logisticians from the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Center-Europe recently collaborated with the U.S. Army Medical Research Directorate-Georgia, known as USAMRD-G, to enhance the unit’s ability to efficiently order medical materiel.
The collaboration is a critical factor in the unit’s ability to sustain its mission to promote warfighter readiness and global health security.
After assessing the unit’s needs, USAMMC-E solidified a partnership with USAMRD-G to support their Class VIII ordering and resupply missions, alleviating the unit’s need to order and ship from stateside.
“The team developed a director-approved concept of operation which tremendously improved logistical mission readiness requirements for peacetime, contingency and transition to hostilities operations,” USAMMC-E Operations Officer Maj. James Greene said.
Part of the solution involved reestablishing USAMRD-G’s connection to the Theater Enterprise-Wide Logistics System, known as TEWLS, for replenishing their medical materiel requirements.
“We were able to streamline their Class VIIIA replenishment by validating their line of accounting and Department of Defense Activity Address Code in TEWLS for ease of ordering going forward,” said Cmdr. Olusegun Olabode, USAMMC-E’s Customer Support Division chief. “The unit is now able to order using TEWLS, directly from USAMMC-E.”
Additionally, the team partnered to overcome medical equipment maintenance challenges.
“We connected them with our Clinical Engineering Division biomedical and Regional Health Care Europe repair technicians for their equipment maintenance support requirements,” Olabode said.
USAMMC-E, a direct reporting unit to Army Medical Logistics Command, is the theater lead agent for medical materiel, or TLAMM, for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command.
Working closely with the Defense Logistics Agency and other industry partners, TLAMMs support the medical supply chain needs of joint forces and the U.S. Department of State operating, assigned or attached to a geographic combatant command.
TLAMMs perform their duties in peacetime/armistice and during a wide range of military operations, from security, deterrence and humanitarian missions to large-scale combat operations.
USAMRD-G, a subordinate unit under the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, was established in 2014 at the Richard M. Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Tbilisi, Georgia. The Lugar Center, administered by the Georgian National Center for Disease Control and Public Health, is a state-of-the-art, internationally certified central reference laboratory and repository with partnerships throughout the region.
USAMRD-G executes its mission to promote warfighter readiness and global health security by building Georgian scientific and medical capacity, monitoring disease threats with a particular focus on antibiotic resistance, and using its laboratory facilities to support U.S. and allied forces deployed within EUCOM.
Accomplishments include advancing understanding of bacteriophages to support treatment strategies against multidrug-resistant bacteria; monitoring mosquito and tick vectors of disease to help quantify the risk of transmission to service members; and continuing to work with the Georgian and other Black Sea regional partnerships to build scientific collaboration and interoperability in the Eastern European area of responsibility.
Story by Eric Cramer
U.S. Army Medical Logistics Command