Defense Medical Research and Development Program - En Route Care Award | W81XWH 21 DMRDP ERCA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 21 DMRDP ERCA

The Defense Medical Research and Development Program (DMRDP) En Route Care Award (ERCA) is a Department of Defense funding opportunity designed to push forward practical, highly innovative tools and knowledge that improve how injured patients are cared for while being moved from the point of injury to definitive medical care. The core idea is to strengthen combat casualty care in situations where evacuation is difficult, delayed, or not available at all, especially in highly mobile, austere, or extreme environments. The program emphasizes solutions that can function under real operational constraints, where space, power, connectivity, staffing, and time are limited, and where conditions such as vibration, altitude, temperature extremes, and prolonged transport can directly affect patient physiology and clinical outcomes.

This opportunity is tightly aligned with the Committee on En Route Combat Casualty Care (CoERCCC) top research priorities. In practical terms, that means proposals are expected to map to needs like better medical documentation during transport, clinical decision support that can help medics and transport teams make sound choices quickly, improved patient monitoring suited for movement and harsh environments, and smoother transfer of care between teams and platforms. It also points to research on transport physiology (how the transport environment changes patient status), maintaining normothermia (preventing dangerous heat loss), transport timing, intelligent tasking (matching assets and care to patient needs), commanders decision support, and even unmanned transport concepts. The focus is not just on generating academic findings, but on producing usable outputs such as prototypes, devices, systems, methods, and improved processes that can realistically be adopted to increase survival and reduce complications.

Although the primary driver is military readiness and Warfighter survivability, the DoD explicitly notes that the resulting products and insights are not limited to battlefield use. The same problems show up in civilian trauma and disaster response, including natural disasters, mass casualty incidents, explosive events, and mass shootings, where the number and severity of casualties can overwhelm local systems and force care to happen during movement or in nontraditional settings. The opportunity also highlights rural trauma as a major civilian parallel: while a minority of Americans live in rural areas, rural communities account for a disproportionately large share of trauma fatalities, in part because many patients are not within an hour of high-level trauma centers. Improvements in en route care, monitoring, decision support, and transfer-of-care processes can directly translate into better outcomes for these patients as well.

From a funding and award-structure standpoint, awards are issued as assistance agreements, meaning the government is supporting a public purpose rather than purchasing a product for direct government use. Awards may be made as either grants or cooperative agreements, and the distinction depends on how much DoD involvement is expected during the project. If substantial involvement is anticipated, such as ongoing collaboration or participation by the funding agency, the award will typically be a cooperative agreement; if not, it will be a grant. The total costs for an individual FY21 ERCA project are capped at $1.4 million for the entire period of performance. Program leadership indicated an intent to fund about three to four awards, supported by roughly $1.8 million per year across FY21, FY22, and FY23 appropriations (with actual funding dependent on availability and on the number, quality, and merit of applications). The opportunity listed an original application closing date of June 23, 2021, with awards expected no later than September 30, 2022.

The opportunity also lays out several compliance expectations that can affect project planning and timelines. Any research involving human subjects, human anatomical substances, or human cadavers must be reviewed and approved by the USAMRDC Office of Research Protections, Human Research Protection Office (HRPO), before the work can begin. This HRPO review is in addition to the applicant institutions own IRB or ethics review, and applicants are advised to plan for a roughly 2 to 3 month HRPO regulatory review timeline. If a project spans multiple institutions, a plan for single-IRB arrangements must be provided, and the lead institution is expected to serve as the central point of contact for the master protocol, consent materials, and regulatory submissions.

Applied and clinical research can be supported under this award, but clinical trials are not allowed. The announcement uses the standard definition of a clinical trial as prospective assignment of human subjects to interventions to evaluate effects on health-related outcomes. It also clarifies what it considers clinical research more broadly (including patient-oriented research, epidemiologic and behavioral studies, and outcomes/health services research) and notes that certain exempt work, such as analysis of existing de-identified specimens or publicly available data consistent with IRB Exemption 4, is not considered clinical research for CDMRP purposes. If the work requires access to active duty patient populations or DoD/VA resources or databases, the application must explain how access will be obtained and sustained over the project period. For animal research, separate approval is required through the USAMRDC Animal Care and Use Review Office (ACURO) in addition to local IACUC review, and applicants are advised to plan for a 3 to 4 month ACURO review timeline.

Administratively, the opportunity is listed under Funding Opportunity Number W81XWH-21-DMRDP-ERCA, managed by the Department of Defense (Department of the Army, USAMRAA) within the broader CDMRP ecosystem. It is categorized as discretionary funding for science, technology, and other research and development, associated with CFDA 12.420, and eligibility is described as unrestricted (open to all entity types, subject to any additional eligibility notes in the full announcement). Overall, the ERCA is aimed at bridging the gap between urgent operational needs and deployable solutions by funding development work that can improve survival during patient movement, when time to definitive care is long and the environment itself becomes part of the medical problem.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Defense Medical Research and Development Program - En Route Care Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 22, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 23, 2021. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 4 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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