Casualty Operations & Resource Prediction Software (CORPS)

The challenges underlying crisis medical response in austere and contested environments are significantly different than those underlying long-range planning or response in established theaters. Strategic and operational planning decisions are made in ample time with full situational awareness regarding the scope and nature of medical needs, availability and positioning of resources, and the immediate and emerging state of the theater. Crisis action decisions must often be made in much shorter time frames, using sparse, low-quality situational data that cannot be verified due to lack of secure communications and denied, disrupted, intermittent, and limited-bandwidth (DDIL) states. Furthermore, as resource allocation for medical response must be constrained by tactical and logistical requirements, the medical benefits of early and best medical response must be weighed against the tactical demands of the mission objectives. Thus, in scenarios where theater realities drive the timing, level, and means of medical response, decision makers must rapidly devise multiple optional courses of action and optimize their selection to accommodate tactical and logistical limitations. Without quantitative metrics assigned to the medical benefits of each response option, these lifesaving decisions must be made using multiple channels of low-quality situational data to obtain subjective medical benefits.This topic seeks proposals for solutions that assist users with medical response decisions in austere environments with variable access to communications or situational data. The desired product will be focused on automated prediction of casualty/patient streams, identification of the related medical needs with variable latencies, and metrics-based evaluation of benefits gained from various responses as a dynamic function of time. Solutions must have the potential for use in the civilian sector (i.e. integrate with civilian networks and infrastructure) as well as integration into existing DoD planning tools. Proposals shall outline the strategic and technical development of the proposed solution, including required data, data sources and environments, data quality management, and model development design and integration. As the technology will be fielded for military use in various operational environments, proposed approaches must be adaptable to variable levels of communication capability and medical care.

Program: SBIR, Phase I and Phase II Agency: Department of War, DARPA Topic number: DPA26BZ06-DV027 Solicitation: 26.BZ Released September 2, 2026; proposals accepted from September 23, 2026 Closes October 21, 2026. Check the official solicitation for the exact due time. Award type: contract, not a grant. Official solicitation: https://www.dodsbirsttr.mil/topics-app/ Listed on SBIR.gov: https://www.sbir.gov/topics/12979. SBIR.gov copies agency solicitations and can lag behind them; the official solicitation is the final word.

Small businesses only: a for-profit US business with 500 or fewer employees, including affiliates.

More than 50% owned and controlled by US citizens or permanent residents (some agencies also accept majority ownership by venture capital, hedge fund or private equity firms; the solicitation says).

SBIR: the principal investigator is primarily employed by the business. STTR: the business partners with a US nonprofit research institution or university, which does at least 30% of the work.

Registered in SAM.gov before submitting.

Check the official solicitation for its own conditions, proposal limits and security review.