The Army Reserve Medical commanding general gave an overview of his command and the contributions of Army Reserve Soldiers at the Defense Health Information Technology Symposium 2024 held here at the Aug. 19, Army Service Day, held before the Aug. 20 general public opening of the symposium.

“We have what I call the “Reserve Advantage,” which is typically if you're an IT person in the Army Reserve, you probably are doing that in your civilian career as well,” said Brig. Gen. Michael L. Yost, who took command of AR-MEDCOM on April 12.

“Many large hospitals utilize that system, but our Soldiers that work in those systems on the civilian side obviously work very closely with them, and that's their day-to-day job,” said the general, who previously served as the deputy commanding general of both 3rd Medical Command (Deployment Support) and the 807th Medical Command (Deployment Support).

When the Army Reserve Soldiers deploy, they fall right in on the information systems they would on as civilians, he said. “They actually can provide and do, in fact, provide a lot of great ideas based on their experience and what they had in the civilian side to help improve the military systems.”

The general said he feels this personally because it is reflected in his own career in health care information systems.

“I’m an example of that. Early in my career, for about two years, I worked in health IT,” said Yost, who was commissioned as a chemical officer in 1993.

“I’m an example of that Reserve Advantage,” the Belton, Texas, resident said.

Another way Reserve Soldiers and National Guardsmen contribute to improving military healthcare information systems is by bringing a culture of innovation to experiment events to determine where the gaps exist with equipment and processes, he said.

“We get into the experimentation,” the general said. “You're going to cover all the bases, although we know that you're probably going to miss something along the way; the Army Reserve and the National Guard are absolutely a part of those experimentation events.”

The general told the primarily active-duty audience it was necessary to understand that Army Reserve Medical Command is not the Army Reserve equivalent of U.S. Army Medical Command.

“We predominantly are providing people or augmentees to help fill missions that either are active component in nature or fill the ranks for Army Reserve units that are deploying across the globe,” said the former enlisted man, who joined the Iowa National Guard in 1988.

“We can help provide for surges and personnel for gaps or vacancies, and then we also are working on, as a part of the transformation structure, being able to expand and integrate the health activities,” he said.

“AR-MEDCOM is just spread across the United States completely, whereas the other two divisions, 807th and 3rd, divided, 807th is more towards the west and 3rd is pretty much up and down the eastern seaboard, but we kind of covered the entire region of the United States,” the Order of Military Medical Merit member said.

Yost said the AR-MEDCOM also has a one-star command, the Medical Readiness and Training Command, which provides observer-controller-trainers and equipment for training events and exercises, such as the Global Medic Exercises held each summer with iterations at Fort Hunter Leggett, California, and Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.

Global Medic is a brigade-level exercise that puts medical units in a forward-deployed context. It operates as part of CSTX's larger Combat Support Training Exercises.

Col. William H. Callahan, the chief of the information systems at U.S. Army Medical Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, said after a break in service from his first active-duty commitment, he rejoined the Army through the Army Reserve, which gave him an appreciation of how the Army Reserve operates.

“My first drill was the weekend before the Sept. 11 attacks, and one month later, I was deployed,” he said.

The native of Annapolis, Maryland, said he sees the Army Reserve as more personnel-driven than the active-duty components, as opposed to focusing on unit movements.

The colonel said one purpose of Army Service Day and Yost's invitation to make a presentation was to help him and his team maximize the Army Reserve Soldiers’ data literacy and integration into the Army’s digital information strategy in support of the warfighter in the theater.

Recently, the Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Mary K. Izaguire authorized the alignment of the Office of the Army Surgeon General and the U.S. Army Medical Command with the Army as the primary IT provider to ensure optimal alignment with the Army’s Medical Modernization Strategy, the colonel said.

“Now, we have a true mission direction—being blessed to go to the Department of Defense Information Network—Army,” he said.

“We’re going to integrate with the signal community with the capabilities they provide and make sure the Army medical equities are voiced to the signal community,” Callahan said.

Yost said that while the Army Reserve participates in solution activities, it is still the customer, not the vendor.

“The Army Reserve is not a provider of the IT systems,” he said.

“We are simply a consumer, an integrator and an operator of those systems, so we basically do is we take what the Army tells us we're going to have, we make sure we get it integrated into our units into the mission that we are about to undertake, and then we operate those systems,” the general said.

“It's interesting on active duty, I think you probably get to play with these systems potentially at least on a weekly basis if not a daily basis in many cases,” he said.

“In the Army Reserve, we don't see a lot of these computer systems until we go to potentially a Global Medic, but most cases until we deploy,” he said.

“We are not experts in the system that the Army has until we get ready to deploy.”