On the battlefield
Medics make life-and-death decisions with limited diagnostics and minimal resources — often far from surgical care, in exactly the austere environments where hemorrhage kills fastest.
501(c)(3) Focused Research Organization
Eliminating preventable death from hemorrhagic shock.
Operation Lifeblood unites military medicine, first responders, and trauma science to build physics-first digital twins of the failing circulation — predictive, field-ready tools that turn survivable shock from a leading killer into a treatable condition, from point of injury to definitive care.
#1cause of preventable death after traumatic injury
~91%of potentially survivable battlefield deaths involve hemorrhage†
Minutesnot hours — the intervention window that decides survival
† Eastridge et al., J Trauma Acute Care Surg (2012) — U.S. combat casualties 2001–2011.
01Mission
Service to those who serve — and everyone they protect.
Our mission is to eliminate preventable death from trauma and hemorrhagic shock by advancing innovative research, developing field-ready treatments, and rapidly translating military medical breakthroughs into lifesaving solutions.
We focus on the full continuum of care — from point of injury, through evacuation and resuscitation, to definitive treatment — and we build our tools as public-good research infrastructure, open to the military and civilian trauma systems that need them.
Vision
A world where survivable shock is no longer fatal.
Core values
- Service to those who serve
- Scientific excellence & integrity
- Operational realism & field utility
- Collaboration across military & civilian systems
- Innovation for impact
- Global relevance
02The Problem
Survivable hemorrhagic shock still kills.
Uncontrolled bleeding remains the leading cause of preventable death after traumatic injury, in combat and at home — not because the deaths are unavoidable, but because the tipping point into irreversible shock is recognized everywhere and predicted nowhere.
In civilian emergencies
EMS crews and emergency departments face unpredictable scenes, long transports, and variable access to blood and surgical capability. The physiology — and the clock — are the same.
In research & development
Academic labs are siloed and publication-driven, industry lacks a near-term product pathway, and grants fragment the problem across subsystems. No institution owns end-to-end delivery.
The tipping point no one can see coming
"Irreversible shock" is a recognized clinical reality — the moment resuscitation stops working — but it emerges from six tightly coupled physiological subsystems that no monitor, score, or clinician can integrate in real time. Predicting it is a systems problem. That is precisely what a digital twin is for.
- Cardiac pump
- Vasculature
- Oxygen debt
- Endothelium
- Inflammation
- Coagulation
Sources: Eastridge et al., J Trauma Acute Care Surg 73:S431 (2012); Kauvar et al., J Trauma 60:S3 (2006).
03How We Work
A Focused Research Organization built to deliver.
The FRO model exists for problems too big for a single lab and unowned by industry: a mission-bound nonprofit with dedicated staff, milestone discipline, and the freedom to build what the field needs rather than what a grant cycle rewards.
Focused mission
One problem, pursued with dedicated staff and single-minded execution — not a portfolio of loosely related grants.
Integrated team
Clinicians, modelers, engineers, and operators in one organization, spanning military and civilian trauma systems.
Milestone-driven
Quarterly milestones with go/no-go gates and independent, external validation & verification at every phase.
Public-good infrastructure
Models, data standards, and benchmarks built as shared infrastructure — success is measured in mortality reduction, not publication volume.
Physics first, not black-box AI
Our digital twins are grounded in the physics and physiology of the circulation — models that conserve mass and momentum, respond plausibly to perturbation, and carry calibrated uncertainty. High-fidelity models become fast reduced-order models that couple to real sensors and run in real time at the point of injury — trustworthy enough for medicine, fieldable enough for austere environments.
04Core Programs
Four lines of effort. One mission.
Flagship
Cardiac Digital Twin
A predictive, physics-first digital twin of the heart and circulation under hemorrhagic shock — high-fidelity models distilled into fast reduced-order models that couple to sensors, forecast trajectory, and flag the tipping point before it is crossed.
Translational
Medicine for First Responders
Decision-support tools tuned for austere, point-of-care environments — putting twin-driven guidance in the hands of medics, EMS crews, and forward surgical teams.
Catalysis
Trauma Innovation Challenge Grants
Targeted external research catalysis for the gaps the flagship cannot internalize — funding the sensors, therapies, and science the mission needs next.
Infrastructure
Hemorrhage Data & Collaboration
Shared datasets, validation benchmarks, and standards that let the whole field build and test against common ground truth.
05Partners
Independent by design. Connected by mission.
Operation Lifeblood works alongside the military medical community — including clinical partners at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) — and serves as an independent verification & validation partner supporting DARPA Biological Technologies Office programs such as VITAL. As a nonprofit, OLB can hold compute, steward shared data, and run third-party V&V free of commercial conflict of interest.
RallyPoint OneScientific computing & digital-twin engineering
NirSenseTissue-perfusion optical sensing
Silicon HeartsComputational cardiology · Oxford, UK
Dual-use from day one: military and civilian trauma share the same physiology — every tool we field for the battlefield serves the ambulance, the ER, and the rural hospital.
06Roadmap
Built to deliver — and built to last.
Milestone-driven, with go/no-go gates and external validation at every phase. The mission doesn't end at delivery: it matures into permanent public-good infrastructure for the trauma community.
Phase 0 · 2026
Stand-up & readiness
Organization, governance, the technical substrate, compute partnerships, and data pipelines.
Phase 1 · 2027
Integrated prototype
A high-fidelity cardiac digital twin: heartbeat, perturbation response, conservation, physiological plausibility.
Phase 2 · 2028
Field-ready models
Reduced-order models, sensor coupling, in-silico clinical trials, and multi-center validation.
Phase 3 · 2029
Translation
Decision-support tooling for austere care; preclinical and prospective observational alignment.
Phase 4 · 2030+
The enduring mission
The FRO transitions into an ongoing nonprofit: training, independent V&V, standards, and enhanced diagnostics and therapies to detect and treat hemorrhagic shock in austere environments.
07Join the Mission
Partner with Operation Lifeblood.
We are building the team, partnerships, and infrastructure to make survivable shock survivable in fact — and we want the right partners beside us.
Clinical & research partnersTrauma physiology, resuscitation science, validation studies
Sensor & technology partnersField-ready monitoring, diagnostics, and compute
Federal programsIndependent V&V, benchmarks, and shared research infrastructure
Philanthropic supportersMission-bound funding for public-good trauma research