An enterprise architecting and sustainability pillars investigation of a cutting-edge health care and research facility for replication to its satellite centers

Abstract

A 2007 congressional mandate to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) concerned instituting a center to address the ever increasing invisible wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and impact to the Military Health System (MHS) by way of its excellence. The National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), constructed through private donations secured by the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund (IFHF), was established for targeting the comorbid traumatic brain injury (TBI) and psychological health (PH) conditions of these wars. There are three prongs of the NICoE's mission: the first involves the clinical care of services members through diagnosis and treatment, the second education, and the third research, which informs the other two prongs. Interdisciplinary and patient- and family-centric, the clinical care offered is cutting-edge, as well as the research conducted, which is on the forefront of efforts to understand comorbid TBI and PH conditions. The clinical care prong is in the process of being replicated to the NICoE's satellite centers at home bases across the U.S., which have already or will be established. This thesis involves characterizing the NICoE from Enterprise Architecting and Sustainability Pillars frameworks, as well as their interrelationships, to gain holistic understanding of the NICoE as an enterprise in service to the MHS and society in general, which is not evidenced in the literature. This understanding, along with information pertaining to the satellite centers and additional research, is used to recommend guidance in the form of heuristics to the NICoE for its replication to the centers.