Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the planned capabilities are of the Defence Medical Services in terms of a) capacity and b) specialised medical care.

Defence Medical Services (DMS) capabilities, across the Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force and Cyber and Specialist Operations Command, support Defence outputs across NATO Contribution, Crisis Response, Strategic Resilience and Global Competition.

The Strategic Defence Review recognised the need to rebuild both medical capacity and capability within Defence to ensure our Armed Forces remain fighting fit in peacetime and are prepared to meet operational demands when at war.

The immediate priority is to optimise existing capability to ensure that the DMS can reliably deliver the support Defence needs today.

The second priority is to modernise operational medical capability and the healthcare support to force generation to meet the demands of contemporary warfare and evolving clinical practice. To accelerate modernisation, Defence has allocated up to £50 million through the Defence Investment Plan over four years, focused on delivering priority capability enhancements:

• Tactical Combat Casualty Care. £20 million in kits for combat personnel based on the latest research on equipment to save lives on the battlefield.
• Forward Blood Products: £10 million to develop or procure dried blood products.
• Tranexamic Acid (TXA): £10 million to provide a more effective way to combat blood loss and save lives.
• Field Hospital Equipment: £10 million to support combat operations at scale.

The third priority is to prepare to expand medical capacity to deliver the Strategic Defence Review's vision of enhanced warfighting readiness.

Rebuilding defence medical capability will focus on the following functions:

1. Medically preparing the Integrated Force
2. Maximising deployable medical capability and capacity within available resources.
3. Managing scalable and adaptable Operational Patient Care Pathways from point of injury or illness to definitive care and rehabilitation in collaboration with allies and UK healthcare systems.
4. Building on our world class military medical research to adapt medical advances to gain operational advantage.