The Army's newest system to track soldier deployability not only tells company-level leaders who is on the shelf and why, it also provides commanders with tools to bring their soldiers back to fighting status.

The Commander Portal, part of Army Medicine's Medical Readiness Transformation program, went live Wednesday morning, and nearly 10,000 soldier profiles had been accessed by the next day, said Col. (Dr.) George Goodwin, chief of the Medical Readiness Division in the Office of the Surgeon General. About 90,000 leaders can access the portal, which gives a snapshot of unit readiness, offers access to soldier profiles, alerts commander when medical issues arise and allows messaging between leaders and medical providers.

More about what the portal now offers, and what could come next:

1. Old vs. new. Before the portal, commanders would need to consult five systems to pull the same data they now can see on a single screen, accessing an alphabet soup of computer storage (MEDPROS, NetUSR, IDES, etc.). The new entry point offers a summary of unit readiness and projections for future readiness based on materials in soldier profiles, as well as "Action Items" and messaging sections.

3. Ask the doc. Commanders with questions for the profile-compiler or the medical staff overseeing a given soldier's issues can message those care providers directly through the portal. Those conversations won't be readable by others in the command chain, who can access the portal but won't be able to read diagnoses or other medically sensitive information, Goodwin said.

5. Self-IT. Goodwin said he spent much of his time immediately after the portal launch helping commanders determine which leaders had which types of portal access. Looking to log in? Request access from the Medical Protection System, or MEDPROS portal. Leaders in all components are eligible.

7. Other portals. Care providers will access messages sent from the Commander Portal via existing interfaces, Goodwin said, but they'll soon get their own one-stop-shop. Plans also call for new administrator portals, and portals for medical provider support staff.

8. There's (not) an app for that. Designers patterned the portal's point-and-click interface after existing applications to improve the user experience, Goodwin said, but the material involved is too sensitive for developers to envision any smartphone-enabled, cloud-based apps. "We're talking about readiness data here," he said.

9. The big idea. Leaders hope the setup will help the Army do more than just track its deployability problem – the force is 16 percent nondeployable, according to a recent Army news release. "We're moving from simply measuring readiness to be sure that we're impacting readiness," Goodwin said.

About Kevin Lilley

Kevin Lilley is the features editor of Military Times.

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